Affective Polarization & the Perception Gap Lesson
How our political other might just be “More Like US”
Tomorrow CERL and the Institute for Citizens & Scholars will host a second of a two-part convening on “Assessing Affective Polarization Among Young People” at Georgetown University. This post draws on CERL Director Dr. Diana Owen’s research that explains the Perception Gap and affective polarization and explores how civic education can address political misperception. We will revisit CERL’s 2024 pilot study evaluating the effectiveness of the Perception Gap lesson developed by non-profit More Like US.
The Perception Gap
Imagine the controversial issue of Immigration and U.S. Borders has been placed on a 100-point scale, where 1 represents the belief that borders should be completely open to everyone all the time and 100 represents the belief that the borders should be completely closed to anyone at all times. Now take a moment to reflect on the following questions:
Where do your beliefs on this issue belong on the scale?
Where do you think the average American Democrat’s belief falls on this scale? What about the average American Republican?
Where do you think someone from the opposite political party as you would place your beliefs on this scale?
If you’re like one of the 1,200 Americans surveyed in a study conducted by Stanford University's Strengthening Democracy Challenge, or one of the many students who participated in this in-class exercise prepared by More Like US, you may have placed yourself closer towards the center of the spectrum but rated someone with opposing views as having a more extreme position. You may have even thought that people with opposing views would have rated your beliefs more extreme than you feel they are.
But the truth of the matter is our policy views are more similar than we may think. In fact, average Americans on both sides of the aisle tend to fall somewhere in the middle on seemingly controversial issues, creating an unexpected overlap between Democrats’ and Republicans’ political positions as illustrated in the graph below.
So if we are not polarized on policy, what is dividing us?
The Perception Gap & Affective Polarization
The phenomenon experienced in the exercise above is known as The Perception Gap or “the extent to which Democrats and Republicans think they disagree with the amount they actually disagree” (Yudkin, Hawkins, and Dixon, 2019: 6). The Perception Gap is both a symptom and driver of affective polarization, a term used to represent the deep sense of distrust, contempt and antipathy toward individuals whose perceived political or personal identities differ from one’s own. Both the Perception Gap and affective polarization are rooted in political identity, rather than ideology. The entrenchment in identity provokes people to stereotype the political other, characterizing their views as more extreme than the reality.
Given the rise in affective polarization in the United States, it has been increasingly important to understand its origins, implications, and possible solutions. Dr. Owen’s recent study on the Perception Gap Lesson explores how a lesson can help teachers address affective polarization in their classrooms.
The Perception Gap lesson is a secondary school classroom intervention that seeks to narrow the perception gap, helping to mitigate affective polarization. The lesson was developed by More Like US – a non-profit organization whose mission is to “correct dangerous political misperceptions at scale by targeting the information environment, starting with Gen Z.” The lesson’s goal is to increase students’ understanding of partisanship and spotlight ideological commonalities that emerge among Americans across the aisle. The lesson plan includes the same warm-up activity you engaged with at the start of this post, a short video that introduces the Perception Gap by revealing where the average American voter from either party actually stands on the issue, and a class discussion that centers on research which found that Americans tend to hyperbolize disparities between political parties. CERL was approached by James Coan, executive director of More Like US, to help evaluate the lesson’s impact.
Research on the Perception Gap Lesson
The pilot study took place in the Spring of 2024 in three high schools in the Washington, D.C. area. Three different teachers with 58 students across four classes (one teacher was responsible for two classes) received the Perception Gap lesson materials. To evaluate the effectiveness of the lesson in narrowing the Perception Gap, CERL analyzed teacher surveys and student exit tickets collected at the conclusion of the lesson. Teachers provided qualitative data with a focus on the lessons’ content, implementation, and observed student outcomes. Student exit tickets included a mix of open- and closed-ended survey questions that collected their opinions about the lesson and assessed their understanding and empathy towards others’ political perspectives.
The feedback from both teachers and students was overwhelmingly positive. Teachers shared that the lesson aligned with the goals set by their school and the district and was consistent with the pedagogy of Decision Education, which encourages students to analyze quantitative data when making decisions. They also stated that they believed their students found the lesson easy to follow and engaging. Student data supports the teachers’ insights as about 75% of the students reported the lesson plan was clear and easy to follow, with 31% agreeing strongly.
Most teachers were convinced the lesson would benefit the students’ civic knowledge and capacity in the long run, while only one teacher mentioned that the lesson’s influence on students’ civic capacity might be fleeting. The majority of teachers’ perspectives on student civic knowledge was supported by the students themselves, as 81% of students indicated the lesson enhanced their understanding of Americans’ political views and behavior and 70% noted the lesson motivated them to be more empathetic toward people with whom they disagree. The success of the lesson was also captured in the students’ open-ended responses where they demonstrated the ability to define, connect, and pose meaningful questions around key concepts like the Perception Gap, polarization, and partisan stereotyping.
Though the initial pilot study is small in scale, the findings underscore the ways in which civic education has the potential to serve as a powerful antidote to partisan misperceptions and affective polarization. These findings gave rise to a second iteration of the project which is currently underway. This time, CERL implemented a pretest/posttest design to better measure students’ acquisition of knowledge and dispositions pertaining to the Perception Gap. CERL is also collecting more information on how the teachers approached preparing for and delivering the lesson by having them note any pedagogies or instructional approaches they used. Dr. Owen will speak more to the evolution of the Perception Gap Lesson study and provide an update on CERL’s findings at tomorrow’s Affective Polarization convening.
Be sure to return next week to read about key insights from the convening!
Post by Jamie Joseph, Research Specialist, CERL
Research by Dr. Diana Owen, Director, CERL
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I would quibble on one thing here. No one thinks that Democrats are open borders. The only people who are really open borders are libertarians.