Article Summary
Introduction
Despite broad concerns in the 2000s and 2010s that the mass public was becoming increasingly polarized on policy issues, most people remain relatively moderate. But are people aware of this reality of moderation? Given the increasing prevalence of media narratives about polarization, the author argues that many people may instead believe that ordinary Americans are intensely ideologically divided. And if they do hold misperceptions about public polarization, what consequences do these perceptions have for their own policy positions? The author suggests that perceptions of public opinion—beliefs about the typical policy positions of liberals and conservatives—are important cues that help people decide where they stand on issues, especially when they don’t know much about the issues otherwise. They accordingly suggest that people who overestimate polarization may become more polarized themselves; if so, perceptions of polarization may become self-fulfilling.
Analytical Approach
To test their hypotheses about misperceptions of polarization and their consequences for individuals’ issue positions, the author conducted two surveys. The first survey focused on just misperceptions. It was conducted using a random sample of registered voters in California. Half of the sample was asked to report their own positions on two policy issues: the role of government in managing social welfare, and the trade-off between protecting the environment and protecting jobs. The other half of the sample was asked to report where they thought “Californians who call themselves liberal” and “Californians who call themselves conservative” stood on the same issues. Then, the author compared the true average positions of liberals and conservatives (from the first half of the sample) to people’s perceptions of those positions (from the second half of the sample).
The second survey explored both misperceptions and their consequences. It was conducted using a broader but non-representative sample of people in the United States. This second survey involved an experiment with three conditions: “ask,” “tell,” and “distort.” In the first condition, “ask,” participants were asked to estimate the average position of liberals and conservatives on three policy issues. In the second condition, “tell,” participants were told the true, relatively moderate, average positions of liberals and conservatives on these issues based on existing polls. In the third condition, “distort,” participants were told false, relatively extreme, average positions of liberals and conservatives for the same issues. Regardless of condition, all participants then answered questions about their own opinions on six new policies so that the author could measure the influence of misperceptions on participants’ own policy positions.
Main Findings
The author finds that people systematically overestimate the extremity of the public’s positions on political issues. They think liberals are more liberal than they really are, and they think conservatives are more conservative than they really are. This is true even when people think about their own groups—liberals overestimate liberals’ extremity, and conservatives overestimate conservatives’ extremity. (Moderates overestimate the public’s extremity as well, but to a smaller degree.) Finally, the author finds that these misperceptions are consequential. Participants in the “tell” condition who were informed about the true, moderate positions of others took significantly less extreme policy positions. Conversely, when participants in the “distort” were given false information about others having extreme views, they reported more extreme policy positions themselves.
Implications
This study shows that many people’s beliefs about where people stand on politics are seriously inaccurate: people think that others are intensely polarized, when in reality they are relatively moderate. Moreover, these misperceptions lead people to being themselves more polarized than they would be otherwise. The finding that misperceptions are linked to polarization also highlights a beneficial intervention: by informing people about the truth of liberals’ and conservatives’ relatively moderate positions on politics, they become less polarized.
The author’s broad idea of “self-fulfilling perceptions of polarization” was a largely novel contribution to this area, and one that proved influential in retrospect. Much of the more recent work on polarization shares a similar focus on how people perceive and cognitively respond to information about polarization.
Questions left unanswered
The author finds that moderates have more accurate perceptions of others’ positions than do liberals or conservatives. They suggest that this may be due to moderates’ relatively limited exposure to information about polarization from media and elites, but testing this possibility was outside the scope of the study.
The author also suggests that people’s misperceptions of others’ extremity might be due to polarized ideologues being most ‘visible’ in media and conversation. Because the people that are most extreme tend to go to rallies, talk about politics, persuade others, be interviewed in the news, and so on, they may be more present in the public consciousness than their more moderate peers. Although this possibility was only speculated on in this article, it has been taken up in several more recent investigations, most notably Krupnikov and Ryan (2022).
Methods and Analysis
Was the study and its analyses pre-registered?: Study was conducted before 2015
Did the study rely on proxy variables to measure polarization?: No
Were standard p-value thresholds used (p<.05 or 95% Confidence Intervals that don’t overlap zero)?: Yes
- Largest p-value presented as significant: 0.1
Were correlational results interpreted with causal language?: No
Limitations / Weaknesses
The author focuses on the consequences of misperceived polarization for participants’ positions on policy issues. However, reported policy positions like this are only occasionally relevant to the functioning of democracy. More often, people make their political voice heard by voting. And it is not clear that these more extreme positions would lead people to support more extreme candidates. That is certainly plausible, but there is no direct evidence for it here. Although it is probably true that we want people to have accurate beliefs about politics, this article does not address whether misperceptions about polarization (or the more extreme, party-line positions that result from them) are actually harmful. Indeed, some literature the author mentions suggests that people taking cues from their own ideological group may help them reach ‘rational’ or ‘sufficiently informed’ issue positions. There is, of course, other work described in this library that discusses the benefits and harms of extreme issue positions, but readers should consult those before they make a strong conclusion that perceptions of polarization are a critical threat to democracy.
Open Data & Analyses
Does the article make the replication data publicly available?: Yes
Does the article make the replication analysis scripts publicly available?: Yes
Article Citation
Ahler, D. J. (2014). Self-fulfilling misperceptions of public polarization. The Journal of Politics, 76(3), 607–620. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022381614000085
Bibtex
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@article{doi:10.1017/S0022381614000085,
author = {Ahler, Douglas J.},
title = {Self-Fulfilling Misperceptions of Public Polarization},
journal = {The Journal of Politics},
volume = {76},
number = {3},
pages = {607-620},
year = {2014},
doi = {10.1017/S0022381614000085},
URL = {https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022381614000085},
eprint = {https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022381614000085}
}