The Parties in Our Heads: Misperceptions about Party Composition and Their Consequences

Abstract

We document a large and consequential bias in how Americans perceive the major political parties: people considerably overestimate the share of party-stereotypical groups in the parties. For instance, people think that 32% of Democrats are LGBT (6% in reality) and 38% of Republicans earn over $250,000 per year (2%). Experimental data demonstrate that these misperceptions are genuine and party-speci c, not artifacts of expressive responding, innumeracy, or ignorance of base rates. These misperceptions are widely shared, though bias in out-party perceptions is greater. Using both observational and experimental data, we document the consequences of this perceptual bias. Misperceptions about out-party composition are associated with partisan a ect, beliefs about out-party extremity, and in exible partyline voting. When provided information about the actual composition of the out-party, partisans come to see its supporters as less extreme and feel less socially distant from them.

Using social and behavioural science to support COVID-19 pandemic response

“…By highlighting an overarching identity, politicians, the media and opinion leaders could help reduce political division around the issue. Second, a growing body of work shows that misperceptions of the other side underlie polarization 96,97 . Therefore, it is likely important to combat misinformation that could generate partisan motivated reasoning and inaccurate beliefs (see "Fake news and misinformation" below).…”

One Tribe to Bind Them All: How Our Social Group Attachments Strengthen Partisanship

“…Further, Ahler and Sood () found that this subjective understanding has the potential to increase partisanship and polarization and that correcting any inflated sense of alignment can work to reduce this partisan bias.…”

“…This makes for a unidimensional or monolithic distinction between the good people and the bad people (in religion, in status, in culture, and in politics), and it is a danger to a pluralistically organized democracy. (p. 86) Further, Ahler and Sood (2017) found that this subjective understanding has the potential to increase partisanship and polarization and that correcting any inflated sense of alignment can work to reduce this partisan bias.…”

Compound Political Identity: How Partisan and Racial Identities Overlap and Reinforce

“…Racial and partisan identities have become more closely associated since the 1970s (Carmines and Stimson, 1989;Green, Palmquist, and Schickler, 2002;Tesler, 2016;Kuziemko and Washington, 2018). Perceptually, Ahler and Sood (2018) show that African Americans are regarded as prototypical Democrats, so much so that the public dramatically overestimates the share of the Democratic party that is black. Whites are strongly associated with the Republi-…”