Metaperception Correction

Minutes

Check what you believe the other side thinks of your side against actual survey data, because partisans in many countries greatly overestimate how much their opponents dislike, dehumanize, and wish to obstruct them, and that exaggerated belief itself drives hostility.

How to do it

  1. 1Write down your estimate first: what share of the other side holds the extreme view you associate with them? How much do they dislike people like you, on a zero-to-hundred scale? How many would support breaking the rules to win?
  2. 2Look up representative survey data, not commentary. Use sources that publish their questions and samples, and look for studies that ask each side both what it thinks and what it believes the other side thinks.
  3. 3Compare. The typical finding is that the real figure is around half of the estimate or less, and that the gap is similar in size on both sides.
  4. 4Ask where your estimate came from. The most extreme members of any group are the most vocal online and the most quoted by the group's opponents; your sample is curated for outrage.
  5. 5Test it in person. Ask someone from the other side what they think of people like you and of a specific issue, and compare it with your prediction.
  6. 6When a message tells you that "they hate you" or "they want to destroy everything you value", treat it as an empirical claim and check it before acting on it.

What to say

  • “What share of them do I think actually believe that? And what do the surveys say?”
  • “They keep showing us the worst person on the other side. How typical is that person?”

When to use it

  • •When you notice that your picture of a political, religious, or cultural outgroup comes mostly from your own side's media or from social feeds.
  • •When a fundraising appeal, pundit, or candidate of any party relies on what the other side supposedly thinks of you.
  • •Before community meetings or negotiations where each side expects bad faith.
  • •When you find yourself supporting a breach of norms on the grounds that the other side would do it first.

Counters

Enemy Image ConstructionNutpickingIn-Group/Out-Group BiasDehumanizationAccusation in a MirrorFear MongeringRage FarmingManufactured OutrageWedge IssuesDivide and ConquerPluralistic Ignorance ExploitationFalse Consensus EffectNaive RealismPopulist Antagonism FrameAlgorithmic AmplificationAvailability Heuristic ExploitationThe Paranoid Style

Evidence and how strong it is

Lees & Cikara (2020) found across several samples that Democrats and Republicans substantially overestimated how negatively the other party would view their own side's actions, that these inaccurate metaperceptions predicted attributing obstructionist motives to opponents, and that showing people the true figures reduced those attributions. Moore-Berg et al. (2020) found that both parties overestimated how much the other side dislikes and dehumanizes them by roughly a factor of two, and that the exaggeration predicted hostility. Mernyk et al. (2022) showed that correcting overestimates of the other side's support for political violence reduced participants' own support for it, with effects persisting for about a month. In the megastudy by Voelkel et al. (2024), which tested 25 interventions on a very large US sample, correcting misperceptions about opponents' anti-democratic attitudes was among the most effective at reducing support for undemocratic practices. The More in Common report (Yudkin, Hawkins & Dixon 2019) found the perception gap was largest among the most politically engaged and the heaviest news consumers. Evidence strength: good (multiple large preregistered experiments), with the caveats that effects are modest, decay over weeks, and are demonstrated mainly on attitudes and not on behaviour.

Cautions
  • Correcting an exaggeration is not the same as showing there is no conflict. Real disagreements on policy and values remain after the misperception is removed, and some opponents do hold the extreme view.
  • Use current, representative data. A reassuring figure from a poor or outdated survey is its own kind of misinformation, and attitudes can change.
  • Averages do not describe the people with power. A moderate median voter does not guarantee moderate leaders, activists, or institutions; hold both facts.
  • Do not use it to tell people who have been directly harmed or threatened that their fear is a misperception. The technique concerns beliefs about large groups, not an individual's assessment of a specific danger.
  1. Lees, J., & Cikara, M. (2020). Inaccurate Group Meta-Perceptions Drive Negative Out-Group Attributions in Competitive Contexts. Nature Human Behaviour, 4, 279-286
    Evidence that partisans overestimate the other side's negativity and that giving accurate information reduces negative attributions.
  2. Moore-Berg, S. L., Ankori-Karlinsky, L.-O., Hameiri, B., & Bruneau, E. (2020). Exaggerated Meta-Perceptions Predict Intergroup Hostility Between American Political Partisans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(26), 14864-14872
    The finding that both US parties overestimate the other side's dislike and dehumanization of them by about a factor of two.
  3. Mernyk, J. S., Pink, S. L., Druckman, J. N., & Willer, R. (2022). Correcting Inaccurate Metaperceptions Reduces Americans' Support for Partisan Violence. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(16), e2116851119
    Experiments showing that correcting overestimates of opponents' support for violence lowers one's own, with effects lasting weeks.
  4. Voelkel, J. G., Stagnaro, M. N., Chu, J. Y., et al. (2024). Megastudy Testing 25 Treatments to Reduce Antidemocratic Attitudes and Partisan Animosity. Science, 386
    Large comparative test in which correcting misperceptions of opponents was among the most effective treatments for reducing support for undemocratic practices.
  5. Yudkin, D., Hawkins, S., & Dixon, T. (2019). The Perception Gap: How False Impressions Are Pulling Americans Apart. More in Common
    Survey report showing both parties overestimate the prevalence of extreme views among opponents, most of all among heavy news consumers.
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