
Do you have a yawning Perception Gap, or are you in sync with American public? - ozdave
https://perceptiongap.us/
======
woopwoop
Maybe this is just my partisanship, but the misperceptions on the conservative
side seem much more egregious than the misperceptions on the liberal side.
Liberal misperceptions are of the form of wishy-washy statements such as
"racism still exists in America". Of course two different people can say that
they agree with this statement while meaning fantastically different things.
On the other hand, one of the conservative misperceptions is that the sizable
majority of Democrats take the concrete, extreme position of being in favor of
completely open borders. I'm a Democrat, and I actually do hold this extreme
position. I can tell you the vast majority of Democrats who I've ever talked
to disagree with me strongly about this; it doesn't even pass the sniff test.
I fail to see any misperception on the Democratic side which is even close to
being this severe.

~~~
tspike
I agree they could pick a better question. It's not interesting to know how
many people agree with that statement.

However, it is very interesting that Democrats actually thought that
Republicans would not agree with that statement

~~~
woopwoop
Perhaps, but there's two ways that this can be interpreted. One is that
Democrats have a misperception about Republicans' beliefs on this issue. I'm
sure to some extent this is true. The other, though, is that Democrats and
Republicans interpret this statement in different ways. So Democrats believe
the statement means X, and Republicans believe it means Y. Republicans tend to
agree with X and disagree with Y. Democrats may have an accurate view of how
Republicans feel about beliefs X and Y, but still underestimate how many
Republicans agree with the statement.

~~~
asark
Interviewer: "Will Republicans say the sky is blue?"

Democrat: "No."

Republican: "Of course it's blue. It's hot pink, which is a shade of blue."

Democrat: "... wait, what? You think... huh?"

Interviewer: "Looks like the Democrat was wrong!"

Which is true... ish. Truthy.

~~~
wool_gather
Not sure where the negative reaction is coming from for this comment. It's a
perfect analogy. You can swap Republican and Democrat in every place if you'd
like; the problem is the same. It's presented as if we have a predicate like
"PARTISAN believes X" and another predicate like "OTHER_PARTISAN estimates
that for all PARTISAN P, (P believes X)".

But it's not as clean as this. Because of the messiness of natural language --
which goes double for political language -- _there 's no guaranteed equality
between the two Xs_.

~~~
asark
Yeah, the main question under discussion here when I made the post seemed to
be the racism one, which appears to have played out the way I depicted. The
general problem is that it's really, really hard to design complex social
science surveys that even maybe measure what you're tying to measure. This
one's complex, and I'm pretty sure doesn't measure what they were trying to
measure. A big chunk of the two major parties don't even agree on the terms
these questions are about, meaning they may well be _aware_ of why their
counterparts would answer "yes" where they said they'd say "no", but consider
their "yes" to be fundamentally about something else entirely.

I wish they'd included "do democrats support murder" and "do republicans
support murder". That'd have been fun. Some would certainly have said yes on
either side (abortion, the death penalty) and they'd be _right_ from their
point of view, even though "do _you_ support murder?" would have been near-
zero on both sides.

------
tspike
I love this angle. There's a lot of room to improve the methodology, but this
is getting at the heart of the question of why we are seeing increasingly
polarized politics.

With a wide perception gap, we are guaranteed to be framing our opponents'
views inaccurately and therefore fighting the wrong battles if movement at a
societal level is actually what is desired.

The more politically diverse your direct in-person interactions are, the
better your perception gap, and the more likely you are to be able to
accurately frame your opponents' arguments when debating with them.

------
wool_gather
This is quite interesting. One question that springs to mind, though: who
exactly are the respondents thinking of when they're asked to estimate? Do
they hear "Are (Democrats|Republicans) $SOME_TRAIT?" and think "Is (Nancy
Pelosi|Mitch McConnell) $SOME_TRAIT?", or "Is my kid's study buddy's
(Democrat|Republican) parent $SOME_TRAIT?" There's always a big difference in
how you judge someone you know personally as opposed to a face on the news.
This doesn't seem to have been asked, or at least it's not mentioned in the
article.

~~~
jerf
I was thinking that probably played a role as well. The extreme partisans on
one side will be exposed to the opinions of the extreme partisans on the
other, and ignoring the namecalling for a moment, it would be interesting to
see if the extremists are accurate about what the other side's extremists
believe.

I don't think that would change very much about this report overall; I'm sure
both extremists would still overestimate the size of the extremists groups on
both sides quite significantly. But it would be an interesting data point.

------
Chazprime
I never realized I was in a majority group, but "Exhausted" is exactly how I
feel about politics lately. I'm capping my CNN viewing at about ~20 minutes a
day.

~~~
dv_dt
As someone who is more recently interested in politics, I skip CNN, and
actually all cable/televised news, because the coverage is so shallow. If it
exhausts you, but you still want to follow it to any degree, I'd recommend
getting your politics through cultivated written sources.

~~~
Chazprime
That's usually what I do now, but my husband likes to watch CNN or MSNBC at
night so there's always some leakage.

------
sudosteph
Interesting, I wonder if the width of the perception gap varies significantly
by geography.

I'd hypothesize that the perception gap would be smaller in the regions
identified here as "more politically tolerant" \-
[https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/03/us-
coun...](https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/03/us-counties-
vary-their-degree-partisan-prejudice/583072/) , just due to the fact that
living and interacting with people with more varied opinions may make people
more in-tune with what members of the opposing political party actually
believe.

Would be cool to an analysis of the data to see if that correlation actually
holds.

------
DubiousPusher
Interesting piece. I would quibble with one part. At the end they imply that
the contention in the country is reconcilable because the extremes do not
represent the majority. Now the last time Americans had an irreconcilable
difference was the Civil War. We do not have good statistics from that time
but there is some evidence that the extreme positions (i.e. abolition vs. pan-
American slavery) were not held by a majority of the people in the country.
One example I'll give is that even after the South withdrew from the U.S.
House and Senate, those bodies still struggled to pass legislation freeing and
or assisting black Americans. This indicates to me that not even the majority
of the new Republican party was radical abolitionist.

I guess my point is that just because the extremes are confused about how
America feels, that doesn't mean they aren't driving us towards irreconcilable
conflict.

Now, I'm not one of those that thinks an intra-American conflict is
forthcoming. But I would guess that if you modeled various internal conflicts
throughout the history of nations, you wouldn't find many where roughly half
the population stood solidly behind one idea and the half stood firmly behind
another. I think in most you'd actually find something a lot like this. Two
outlying groups driving the discourse against each other and a constituency of
allies on each side that can't break away for various reasons.

~~~
linuxftw
> One example I'll give is that even after the South withdrew from the U.S.
> House and Senate, those bodies still struggled to pass legislation freeing
> and or assisting black Americans. This indicates to me that not even the
> majority of the new Republican party was radical abolitionist.

Many assuredly weren't abolitionists, at least not as a matter of policy. The
Corwin Amendment [1] was even passed by the 2/3 majority in the remaining
senate and ratified by some northern states. Don't forget, Maryland was a
slave state and fought on the side of the north.

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corwin_Amendment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corwin_Amendment)

------
moate
"Properly controlled immigration can be good for America" is a meaningless
question. Of course Democrats would think Republicans would be opposed to this
idea. The idea of "proper control" is the whole debate! We have republicans
who feel that building a wall is part of properly controlling things and
democrats who think it's a moral outrage. Several of these questions are
phrased so as to make them non-partisan and in doing so create a "bad people
on both sides" effect. Vague statements like this create bad sociology my
friends!

This isn't about a perception gap. It's about not putting together very good
polling questions and then drawing some conclusions based on them.

------
harimau777
Not directly what the article is talking about, but I feel like this is
related:

I recently spoke to a man who used to work for the Republican party. He felt
that politics is so polarized because the two parties aren't even talking
about the same things. The example he gave is that it's not possible for
Democrats and Republicans to find common ground on racial inequality, because
the Republican party simply doesn't have that as part of their platform.

~~~
sudosteph
Yeah, that's a particularly tough one because the most obvious laws about
racial inequality (equal access to housing, jobs, education) were passed a
while ago.

Today if you want to address racial inequality via legislation, that means
police reform and drug policy. When you talk about those subjects to someone
who isn't either directly affected by them or well-educated about them, they
don't seem on their face to be related to racial inequality.

Only recently do you see republicans starting to talk (a little) about drug
policy changes now that opioid abuse has started becoming a huge problem in
some white communities. Video camera footage of police abuse may also help
eventually bring republicans in on that problem - but that is dependent on
cops having working cameras, not turning them off, and the people watching the
video actually having empathy for the people being abused. Maybe if cops
started harassing vocal 2nd amendment advocates their tune would change.

------
abathur
I wonder if there's definitional confusion underlying this?

I rarely see discussion of the gaps that hide under an umbrella like
<party/ideology>-ans. Are we talking about candidates and office-holders?
Party officials and operatives? Openly-affiliated pundits? Activists? People
otherwise not on the playing field who happen to vote for or be registered as
party-affiliated? Abstract stereotypes projected by partisan media?

In practice, these groups may be largely distinct, and questions referencing
them can easily smuggle a lot of assumptions in. I would be surprised if
highly disengaged voters and highly engaged ones aren't talking about
different things when they tell you what they think <X>-ans think, so you'd
_expect_ a delta.

~~~
abathur
There's also a lot of dogma/orthodoxy that elected <X>-ans have to at least
pay lip-service to, which might exacerbate perceived gaps on issues that are
often in the talking points/propaganda efforts/purity tests.

Aside from nailing down who the questions mean, it might be interesting to see
how well respondents can imagine what partisans think about obscure concrete
issues.

------
erobbins
I think this "study" is crap. On one side, you have armed terrorists
threatening a state legislature, and on the other side you have... what?

The gap isn't in perception, it's in civilized behavior.

------
LyndsySimon
Overall, I think this is a very interesting article and raises some good
points. I did have some questions though.

Why are "Traditional Liberals" part of the "Exhausted Majority", but
"Traditional Conservatives" part of the "Wings"? This is particularly
confusing to me because the latter is the second largest of all groups.

In fact, if I'm reading their chart correct, they seem to be claiming that
anyone who identifies as "conservative" is part of the "wing"...

~~~
rootusrootus
It sounds as though they derived the definition of "wing" from the perception
gap measurement. I think calling everyone who is not in [that definition of] a
wing "exhausted" is confusing.

~~~
Zak
That doesn't match the graph shown, in which traditional conservatives have a
slightly smaller perception gap than traditional liberals.

The tribes come from another report from the same people, which says
"[Traditional conservatives] are included as a wing segment because they are
much closer in characteristics to the Devoted Conservatives than to the
Exhausted Majority." I'll admit I've only skimmed the graphs (it's 110 pages
long), but I'm not sure their data shows that clearly.

[https://hiddentribes.us/pdf/hidden_tribes_report.pdf](https://hiddentribes.us/pdf/hidden_tribes_report.pdf)

~~~
sampleinajar
I will add that in their methodology they asked the questions without asking
for political self-identification, then grouped responders by answers and
labeled the groups themselves. There is a consistent and significant response
shift when going from traditional conservative to moderate, which I think
correctly identifies the groups.

~~~
Zak
It's not the tribes people are questioning here, but the categorization of
traditional conservatives as a "wing" and traditional liberals as "exhausted
majority".

Looking at a few more of their charts, I think I can see the case for it. On
social issues, the gap between traditional conservatives and moderates is
large, and the gap between traditional conservatives and devoted conservatives
is quite small. On the other hand, the gap between traditional conservatives
and moderates is large, while the gap between traditional liberals and passive
liberals is much smaller.

~~~
sampleinajar
Fair enough. I took this as questioning the tribe labels: "they seem to be
claiming that anyone who identifies as 'conservative' is part of the
'wing'..."

------
ocschwar
I am extremely out sync. I ride my bike every day right through the heart of
alleged MS-13 territory. The American public thinks I've been shot into Swiss
cheese by now.

~~~
mLuby
Thoughts and prayers!

~~~
ocschwar
Very helpful!

------
drngdds
I thought I was having a stroke looking at that title until I realized that
"yawning" also means "wide."

------
gremlinsinc
The fact that they count Breitbart, and Redstate as 'news sources' skews the
study a bit. Of course people who read that crap are going to have a larger
perception gap. Even Huffington Post, and Buzzfeed skew more to the left.
That's their reader-base, they are going to tailor pieces to keep the readers
they have who lean progressive.

I think they should've kept news sources to only nbc/cbs/cnn/cnbc/abc/hn as
those are really the most conservative (not meaning GOP but 'reserved') news
agencies that tend to (at least try to appear) non biased. Fox is definitely
biased right, and MSNBC (which is what I watch) I agree skews left of center.

I think if we brought back the Fairness doctrine that would help a lot but I
don't know if we could enforce that on the internet or if we should. I'm a
social democrat (not for full socialism, for social democracy like
Denmark/France/Germany), but I can definitely see the perception gap for what
it is, and it's causes. Our media system is broken. It's a propaganda machine
that is controlled by multiple parties with no middle ground. A fairness
doctrine would at least allow all sides of an issue to be represented and
temper the propaganda machines.

There are billionaires and Super PACS on both sides that are working to divide
us. In fact there's some albeit conspiracy-sounding theories that the elite
want us divided by fringe issues like abortion/gun control/immigration so we
don't band together on worker rights, labor unions, healthcare, etc that would
force them to funnel money at the bottom and switch from trickle down to
trickle up economy. As long as we're hating each other and have these
misperceptions and polarizations we're easy sheep to control.

------
ceejayoz
Some of these "perception gaps" may be definitional.

For example, the "racism still exists in America" question. A right-wing
person may say "racism exists, but it targets white people now". A left-wing
person might see that as a _denial_ of racism's existence. You'd get a
fundamental disagreement on what the answer _meant_.

~~~
CriticalCathed
Absolutely. I don't see any of this in their analysis of the results.

------
DiabloD3
All this thing is telling me is anyone who is a self-defined member of a
party, no matter if it is Democrat, Republican, Liberal, or whatever, hold
"extreme views", where that is defined as being a grittier bolder version of
reality; to put it bluntly, this thing tells me that people who are "into"
politics are trolls, and should be avoided, no matter which party they
subscribe to.

I mean, it calls itself "The Perception Gap", except there really isn't any
such thing by the way they describe it: half the things they ask about are
factual things (such as the second amendment (it doesn't matter if you
personally think we shouldn't bare arms, it is in the Constitution on how and
when to do so), or America being a socialist country (FDR made America adopt
many Socialist ideals, forming a hybrid of modern Socialism and our existing
Democratic Republic, to fill the gaps in one with the other)); the other half
are just polarizing issues that are complex, nuanced, and not something you
merely can ask on a simple questionnaire.

The whole article says things that are true, but tries to build a narrative
around those things that doesn't quite function. For it to be effective, imo,
it should just straight out claim people don't like the truth, don't like the
reality they live in, and have chosen to ignore it or recontextualize it into
something more palatable instead of accepting it: reality is still real, even
when you don't believe in it.

The truth is: our politics are shaped by people who live in pure fantasy, they
are allowed to vote, even though they aren't even capable of understanding
what they are voting on, or what the outcome will actually mean (ex: Trump
protest votes helped get Trump elected, even though the people making the
protest votes readily admitted Trump was a bad candidate and would not make a
good President), and the article just dances around the issue instead of
nailing it.

------
gavanwoolery
This falls right in line with the concept of cognitive dissonance [1].

In short, people want the world to fit their narrative, not the other way
around.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance)

~~~
vore
How is this cognitive dissonance? The people being surveyed aren't holding
conflicting opinions within themselves.

~~~
gavanwoolery
The cognitive dissonance I have observed is in real-world observations vs
other data (social media, news, etc). Basically, if you follow the news
frequently, you'd be inclined to think the world was on fire because that's
what gets the clicks. But if you observe the world around you, talk to real-
world people of differing political opinions, you will find that everything is
relatively tame compared to the picture people are inclined to paint.

------
baggy_trough
If 30% of a population holds a view, it shouldn't be described as "extreme".

~~~
powrtoch
30% of the population holding extreme views isn't the same as any particular
view being held by 30% and considered "extreme". They don't go into exactly
what this figure means, but at the least we can imagine 15% of Americans
holding one extreme and 15% holding the opposite extreme. Or even more
credibly, it could mean that 30% of people hold at least one "extreme" view,
but each individual "extreme" view is only held by 1-2%.

------
fallingfrog
It’s really important to understand that ideology does not arise in a vacuum;
it is an expression of one’s material conditions. For example if you tell me
you believe that taxation is theft and the free market will solve your
problems, I can reasonably guess that you are the owner of some business for
whom labor is just a cost and taxation to support public goods is going to
cost you more than it benefits you. That includes everyone from corporate
interests down to small business owners. The rest of the republican base is
those who can be induced to be allies of the above on the basis of race. Keep
that in mind and all their ideological positions suddenly make sense. They’re
just looking out for number one. Even the immigration stuff; labor is at a
disadvantage when capital can move freely but labor is stuck.

This is also the reason that the extreme right has often had corporate
sponsorship at key moments in history.

~~~
aoeusnth1
I agree with you except on a small point - I don't think restricting labor
movement is particularly beneficial to capital - but I don't see much
relevance to the article.

~~~
fallingfrog
I felt that the article was trying to paper over genuine conflicts by making
them just look like thinly held opinions. The message is: don’t fight, it’s
not a real difference, it’s just slightly different ideas. That’s just false-
a hen can’t be allies with a fox. If people are going to fight for themselves
they have to know who their enemies are and _why_ those people are their
enemies.

To make the point even more explicit- who do you suppose funds More In Common,
and why do you suppose they do that?

~~~
slowmovintarget
The message of the article is _we are _not_ enemies_ not "don't fight."

Fellow Americans should be able to disagree and settle the conflict with
elections. Enemies wish for each other's destruction, and while it may be how
you feel, it is not the right frame of mind to take when attempting exchange
of ideas on policy.

~~~
fallingfrog
See now, that right there is why liberals consistently lose and never learn
from it. The right _knows_ they’re at war, and they act accordingly, and the
socialist left does too, but nobody listens to them, and then you have all
these centrist liberals who think it’s a high school debate club or something.
This is win or die stuff man. If the enemy acts like it’s a war and you don’t,
you’re going to lose, every time.

~~~
slowmovintarget
Sigh. I'm a conservative.

It shouldn't be a war. It should be a philosophical disagreement between
brothers and sisters.

~~~
fallingfrog
Look: I was a conservative when I was a teenager and hadn’t gone out to see
the real world yet. But at some point you go out and the ideal collides with
the reality and you have to face what those ideas really mean.

I say what I say out of a desire to influence people; I want to influence
people out of a desire to make the world better. I have two kids- I don’t want
them to be drafted in a war, or go hungry because of climate change. But if
the conservatives get their way, that’s what will happen to them. I’ve been in
city Council meetings advocating for paid sick leave for local working people.
On my side was the vast majority of citizens, together with organized labor,
on the other side was the chamber of commerce. The testimony was 20 to 1 in
favor. But we lost, because the young lawyer in the expensive suit from the
Chamber stood up and reminded the city Council members of who funded their
election campaigns. And by defeating paid sick leave, they force people to
work preparing food when they have the flu, they force people to choose
between watching their sick kids or losing their jobs. I was once a fast food
worker and my boss wouldn’t let me go home even though I was barfing in a
trash can behind the fryolator. An experience like that changes you. But you
know, the Chamber won, and they saved the business owners of the city a lot of
money.

Look, your side wants a war with Iran that will necessitate the return of the
draft; to do nothing about climate change which is rolling the dice on
civilization itself; and to literally put children in cages (while making
substantial profit for doing it). I’m sorry but you’re not my brother or
sister if you support that kind of violence.

------
supergauntlet
These questions are meaningless. Seriously? They asked a question like "Does
racism still exist in America?" and thought many people were going to say no?

Democrats and Republicans both agree there are problems. The difference is in
their solutions. If you ask a facile question like "Is homelessness bad" of
course both sides will agree. The difference is that the Republican solution
is criminalizing homelessness and other things that treat the symptoms, or
handwaving it away and "letting the free market fix it." That doesn't even get
into all the ways Republicans repeatedly will defund and undermine any
government program, no matter how well they're working. (They're trying to cut
SNAP for fucks sake. Over 40% of SNAP recipients are children!) Meanwhile
Democrats will make mistakes and get caught in bureaucracy but at least
actually make an effort at attacking the cause.

Even if you virulently disagree with me on my characterization of the two
parties, you have to agree that the linked article is meaningless. The fact
that "both sides agree" on the problems means _nothing_ if one side's
solutions aren't fact-based.

~~~
tspike
> and thought many people were going to say no?

Apparently, many Democrats thought Republicans would say no. That's what's
being measured.

~~~
CriticalCathed
But that is because, for example, many republicans (7/10?)[0] think that the
democrats are racist but they are more likely to consider democrats
discriminating against whites. A republican is more likely to say that sexism
exists, but against men, rather than women. A republican is more likely to say
that climate change exists, but isn't anthropogenic -- which is tantamount to
climate change denial. The definition of what "properly controlled
immigration" means is also unclear; for a republican it may be more likely to
mean only let white people in or to reject all muslims. To be clear I'm not
saying that all republicans believe these things, it's only that there is at
the very least an extremely vocal group of people on the right who would
answer these questions in the same way as someone on the left, but for vastly
different reasons.

The definitions of what these words actually mean are in dispute between the
two groups. Someone on the left may be answering the question as "what do they
actually believe, regardless of how they would answer the question." I know
that's how I'd reply to a survey like this. I certainly wouldn't have in the
moment considered if they would have a warped view of the words.

>[0]
[https://perceptiongap.us/media/w5xgckq3/fig7d.png](https://perceptiongap.us/media/w5xgckq3/fig7d.png)
(Am I mischaracterizing this graph with respect to racism?)

side note, I fall into the post-doc group who would say that my colleagues and
friends generally agree with me politically. But from my perspective, it's
because we are more united on what the right ways to handle the problems
actually are rather than because we are politically isolated. I consider
myself a libertarian, but I generally vote blue; I've got friends who disagree
with my general ideological stances but who understand that particular
policies are better than nothing. I think that the story that this [1] graph
is telling is that the more educated you become, the more you realize that
only one of two parties in the united states is proposing sane solutions to
the problems we face; whereas republicans in general are the ones who have a
perception gap. Probably because they're more likely to be misinformed by the
media they consume. [2]

[1]
[https://perceptiongap.us/media/pboj2mgp/fig5c.png](https://perceptiongap.us/media/pboj2mgp/fig5c.png)

[2]
[https://perceptiongap.us/media/3aaiax5h/fig4c.png](https://perceptiongap.us/media/3aaiax5h/fig4c.png)

~~~
jerf
But remember, the whole point of the question is "What do you think _they_ are
going say in response to this question?"

Part of that is correctly interpreting how they are going to understand the
question.

If you can't understand how the other side is going to read the question
correctly, it's still a fail.

~~~
moate
If you're using a blunt instrument to measure a nuanced result, you're going
to lose some of your nuance.

If I say "Dogs are members of Canis familiaris" and someone else says "no,
those are wolves" and a 3rd person asks me "How likely is that guy to know
what Canis familiaris is" based on me asking him the question "Do you know
what Canis familiaris is?" I'm going to get the answer wrong 100% of the time,
because of my "perception" of things.

This is meaningless however, because some facts are facts, and not everything
is "shades of gray". Also vice versa.

Saying "there's a perception gap" when two people aren't even having the same
conversation doesn't feel like the blame should be on either person. In this
case, the observer who's trying to draw a conclusion is drawing a pointless
conclusion/asking trap questions.

