In America, liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats are disappearing from national politics; while individual communities are becoming ever redder or bluer in the political affiliations.

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What the Right gets wrong when the Left goes nuts

By Peter Franklin

But what’s the cause of this polarisation? Are Americans becoming more fanatical in their party loyalties? Not really, says Yascha Mounk in his column for The Atlantic. Quite the opposite, in fact:

“Far from increasing, Americans’ attachment to their political parties has considerably weakened over the past years.”

However, it appears that our decreasing attachment to our own side has been offset by increasing hostility to the other side – what Mounk calls “negative partisanship”.

Last year I looked at the theory that these two trends are related: the more our political heroes let us down, the more we have to see their opponents as villains. Psychologically, it allows us to maintain our loyalties despite the disappointment.

An alternative, or perhaps complementary, idea is that Republicans and Democrats each believe the other to be more extreme than they actually are.

As Mounk explains, a new report (from More in Common) has found that “Americans’ mental image of the ‘other side’ is a caricature:

“Asked to guess what share of Republicans believe that immigration can strengthen America so long as it is ‘properly controlled,’ for example, Democrats estimated about half; actually, nearly nine in ten agreed with this sentiment…

“…Republicans approximated that only about half of Democrats are “proud to be American” despite the country’s problems. Actually, over four in five Democrats said they are.”

And these are just two examples of the Perception Gap, which applies across a wide range of issues – from sexism to gun control.

The twist is that this doesn’t appear to be a function of ignorance. Quite the opposite in fact:

“Americans who rarely or never follow the news are surprisingly good at estimating the views of people with whom they disagree.”

As for formal education, the more highly educated a Democrat the more inaccurate their view of what Republicans believe. In the case of Republicans, education doesn’t appear to make things worse, but it doesn’t make it better either.

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Who's most intolerant in America?

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Mounk calls these findings “deeply worrying”, but they accord with a growing pile of evidence that knowledge, education and expertise doesn’t necessarily broaden the mind.

So what’s going wrong? Part of the answer lies in a recent essay by Yancey Strickler called ‘The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet’.

The title is inspired by the Chinese science fiction writer Liu Cixin, who compares the universe to an eerily silent forest to explain the apparent lack of evidence for the existence of alien life. The forest is not in fact lifeless at all, but full of animals keeping quiet because “night is when the predators come out.” In other words, there’s plenty of aliens out there, but they’ve got the good sense not to advertise their presence.

Whether or not that’s true of the universe, Strickler argues that the internet is full of things best avoided:

“In response to the ads, the tracking, the trolling, the hype, and other predatory behaviors, we’re retreating to our dark forests of the internet, and away from the mainstream.”

The spaces where political issues are debated have got especially nasty. Therefore people who want to express an opinion without being torn to pieces do so in ‘digital refuges’ – where the internet’s predators can’t pounce. Podcasts are a good example:

“There, meaning isn’t just expressed through language, but also through intonation and interaction. Podcasts are where a bad joke can still be followed by a self-aware and self-deprecating save. It’s a more forgiving space for communication than the internet at large.”

Other examples include “newsletters… Slack channels, private Instagrams, invite-only message boards, text groups, Snapchat, WeChat, and on and on.”

The trouble with these niches is that they’re hidden away – not just from the wolves, but just about everyone who doesn’t already belong to them. The internet (and political discourse more generally) is dividing not into echo chambers so much as disconnected hidey-holes. Reasonable people of different persuasions therefore don’t get to hear one another, and thus their perceptions of the other side are formed by their experience of the rampaging predators.

Away from the internet, other news media, campus culture and the most politicised professions, Democrats and Republicans get to interact in the context of everyday life – as opposed to an ideologically-charged slanging match. No wonder then that those most disconnected from these sources of political ‘information’ have a more accurate view of their fellow Americans.

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When eggheads are bigger idiots than meatheads

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Nevertheless, the fact that expanding one’s knowledge can be be so counter-productive is desperately sad.

What we need are more places and publications that provide viewpoint diversity within a civilised context. And, if nowhere else, that is something you can always find at UnHerd.

The problem isn’t that they’ve got the vote – rather it’s that they’ve been manipulated by fake news and social media into voting the wrong way. Whereas once they were guided by the gentle voices of their intellectual betters, the hoi polloi now decide for themselves where they get their information from. As a result they’ve self-segregated into their chosen echo chambers – emerging only to batter each other senseless on Twitter and Facebook.

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Don’t believe what those idiots are telling you about echo chambers

By Peter Franklin

It’s not really their fault, of course. These poor, weak-willed creatures just can’t help themselves. It’s therefore up to those of us with the privilege of a good education and a sophisticated outlook on life to intervene before our respective nations tear themselves apart.

Well, that’s one narrative – but does it stand up to scrutiny? In an eye-opening piece for The Atlantic, Amanda Ripley, Rekha Tenjarla and Angela Y He, look at the evidence (from a US perspective).

There’s not much doubt that America is more politically polarised than it used to be:

“We know that Americans have become more biased against one another based on partisan affiliation over the past several decades. Most of us now discriminate against members of the other political side explicitly and implicitly—in hiring, dating, and marriage, as well as judgments of patriotism, compassion, and even physical attractiveness, according to recent research.”

This is sad – but is it equally true of all Americans? The Atlantic commissioned research to find out:

“The survey asked how people would feel if a close family member married a Republican or a Democrat; how well they think the terms selfish, compassionate, or patriotic describe Democrats versus Republicans; and other questions designed to capture sentiments about political differences.”

The results may confound expectations:

“In general, the most politically intolerant Americans, according to the analysis, tend to be whiter, more highly educated, older, more urban, and more partisan themselves.”

Of course, it’s no surprise that the most politically partisan individuals are the most politically prejudiced. However, the fact that such prejudice is associated with higher levels of education is counter-intuitive. One would expect intolerance and ignorance to go together.

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The most dangerous thing about meritocracy

By Peter Franklin

Perhaps we need to distinguish between the ignorance of not knowing certain facts and the ignorance of not knowing people who are different from you and yours:

“…according to decades of research into how prejudice operates, humans are more likely to discriminate against groups of people with whom they do not have regular, positive interactions.”

If this is all about interaction, then why aren’t urban areas havens of tolerance? Isn’t the whole point of a city to bring people together? It should be, but the size and diversity of a city population increases the scope for people to pick and choose who they associate with (the real point of city living, a cynic might say). While this facilitates creative specialisation, it also facilitates social separation. Moreover, it’s reasonable to assume that the highly qualified will be those most likely to work in rarefied professional environments and to live in exclusive neighbourhoods.

Viewed in this light, the findings of the survey aren’t so unexpected. If older, more educated, urban-dwelling, white Americans are the least likely to practice political tolerance, it’s because they don’t have to – they can afford a better class of bubble.

If one assumes a correlation between education and knowledge, one might hope that the alienating effects of exclusivity would be moderated by possession of the facts. Unfortunately, knowing more about an issue doesn’t make people more open-minded to evidence that contradicts their beliefs – quite the opposite in fact. There’s also research that shows that exposure to the arguments of the ‘other side’ leads people to harden their own opinions.

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When eggheads are bigger idiots than meatheads

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In other words, the ‘bubbles’ that incubate political prejudice are not bubbles of fact and opinion, but of trust.

Clearly, we need to overcome these barriers – and not just to lessen the negative effects of political polarisation. There’s a growing body of evidence that, in the right circumstances, viewpoint diversity can be a positively good thing. When people of widely differing opinions are not only willing to tolerate one another, but to actively cooperate, they can achieve more than teams who share the same middle-of-the-road opinions.

Viewpoint diversity is one of the things we try to achieve at UnHerd. You, of course, may disagree.