U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene drew raised eyebrows when she suggested on Presidents Day that the United States pursue a “national divorce.”
“The last thing I ever want to see in America is a civil war. Everyone I know would never want that – but it’s going that direction,” Taylor Greene said in a follow-up interview. “Everyone I talk to is fed up with being bullied by the left, abused by the left and disrespected by the left.”
It seems safe to say that most left-leaning people would be puzzled by these accusations. And Taylor Greene certainly didn’t indicate that she understands the left’s perspective on the causes of U.S. political conflict.
It’s intuitive that misunderstandings and hostility often go hand in hand.
And yet people don’t usually think that their own emotions can be downright wrong, the way their positions on a factual issue can be incorrect. Is it possible for a feeling to be a mistake?
I am a behavioral economist who studies biases in belief formation, and in my forthcoming book, “Undue Hate,” I argue that, for a variety of reasons, we indeed tend to excessively dislike people we disagree with.
Suppose Jane, a Democrat, overestimates the likelihood her Republican neighbor Joe takes bad actions or has bad opinions – by whatever Jane considers “bad.” These beliefs likely contribute to Jane’s negative feelings toward Joe. If so, since these beliefs are mistaken, then Jane would dislike Joe more than she should.
In fact, people in general have a tendency to make this mistake when disagreeing with others for many reasons. I call this tendency “affective polarization bias.”
To look for evidence of this bias, I review studies of the accuracy of people’s beliefs about opinions held by members of the other political party. I also examine the accuracy of beliefs about the selfishness of choices by people in the other party.
My research shows that people are consistently too pessimistic about their partisan counterparts. On both sides, people tend to overestimate the other side’s extremism, hostility, interest in political violence and selfishness.
The concept of undue dislike is intuitive for most people.
The media environment – specifically the proliferation of cable and online news, as well as social media – is a common explanation for the growth in political hostility and has likely also led to growth in undue dislike.
These days, people spend more time talking to others who are like-minded about politics, in addition to getting more like-minded news.
Although people don’t believe everything they hear, they do err toward credulity, especially when encountering information they wish to believe is true.
In the U.S., strengthened partisan identity has been on the rise because of the merging of partisan identities with other identities – such as someone’s cultural or ethnic background. This has also increased people’s motivation to hold beliefs demonizing the opposition.
What’s more, there are several other important causes of undue dislike toward our rivals stemming from fundamental cognitive errors.
Overconfidence and naive realism – thinking our tastes are objective truths – make us overestimate the chance that those who disagree with us on just about anything are doing something wrong. As a result, we overestimate the other side’s poor judgment and bad motives.
“False consensus” can make us overestimate how much others actually agree with us. This in turn makes us too skeptical of the sincerity of people who express different viewpoints.
The good news is that mistakes can be corrected. We can undo hate. Research efforts are underway to better understand these mistakes and correct them.
America may need a bipartisan, top-down effort to have a shot at significantly decreasing unwarranted hatred in the short run.
Daniel F. Stone is an associate professor of economics at Bowdoin College. Distributed by The Associated Press.
