Understanding and Combating Misperceived Polarization

Abstract

By many accounts politics is becoming more polarized, yielding dire consequences for democracy and trust in government. Yet a growing body of research on “false polarization” finds that perceptions of “what the other side believes” are inaccurate–specifically, overly pessimistic–and that these inaccuracies exacerbate intergroup conflict. Through a review of existing work and a reanalysis of published data, we (i) develop a typology of the disparate phenomena that are labeled “polarization,” (ii) use that typology to understand when polarization is “false,” and (iii) identify when false polarization gives rise to true polarization (e.g., extreme issue attitudes and prejudice). We further suggest that a specific psychological domain is ideal for developing corrective interventions: meta-perception, one’s judgment of how they are perceived by others. We review evidence indicating that correcting meta-perception inaccuracies is effective at reducing intergroup conflict, and discuss methods for precisely measuring meta-perception accuracy. We argue that the reputational nature of meta-perception provides a motivational mechanism by which individuals are sensitive to the truth, even when those truths pertain to the “other side.” We conclude by discussing how these insights can be integrated into existing research across multiple disciplines seeking to understand polarization and its negative consequences.

Overperception of moral outrage in online social networks inflates beliefs about intergroup hostility

“…However, these studies were not well-equipped to examine the absolute accuracy of group-level judgments given that we had truth criteria for individuals in the group (self-reports of outrage) but no obvious truth criteria for the group as a whole. Future studies should examine experimental designs that can better tease apart individual vs. group level accuracy, such as in recent work on group meta-judgments 32 .…”

“…These beliefs can be problematic for intergroup relations, because people often conform to social norms even when they are overperceived 30,31 . For instance, recent work suggests that when people overperceive the extremity of a group's moral attitudes, it leads them to adopt more extreme attitudes themselves [32][33][34][35] . Understanding the affective building blocks of intergroup misperceptions can advance theories of intergroup relations for the digital age.…”

Red state, blue state: The polarizing influence of color in political maps

“…Expecting the rest of the population's attitudes to be polarized, regardless of the true polarity of the population, leads to increased political action, such as attending political rallies and donating money to parties and candidates 4 . Polarized predictions can also escalate conflict 8,9 .…”

The Misleading count: An identity-based intervention to counter partisan misinformation sharing

“…This strategy could be particularly useful for misinformation on sacred moral values, i.e., rigid stances on moral issues that are resistant to trade-offs (e.g., attitudes towards immigration, and universal healthcare, see (26,27)), which people are more likely to share as compared to misinformation on non-sacred issues (e.g., infrastructure, see (11)). Crowdsourcing only from the in-group may also contribute to correcting inaccurate perceptions of in-group consensus over particular issues, which could help reduce misperceived polarization (see (28)). Therefore, identitybased interventions, or using identity-relevant cues to nudge people into being more accurate, may be an effective and resource-efficient approach to moderating online misinformation.…”