TY - JOUR PY - 2023// TI - Correcting misperceptions of the other political party does not robustly reduce support for undemocratic practices or partisan violence JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America A1 - Druckman, James N. SP - e2308938120 EP - e2308938120 VL - 120 IS - 37 N2 - A growing consensus suggests that a cause of support for undemocratic practices and partisan violence is that partisans misperceive the other side. That is, they vastly exaggerate the extent to which members of the other party support undemocratic practices and violence. When these misperceptions are corrected, citizens' own beliefs moderate. I present results from an experiment that show that misperception corrections do not have an effect in the presence of competing information (i.e., that challenges the validity of the correction or offers a conflicting narrative). Basic corrections do not constitute a robust way to counter democratic backsliding stemming from citizens' misperceptions. The results highlight the need to devise stronger misperception interventions and, more generally, to consider competing information environments when devising any scalable behavioral intervention.
Language: en
LA - en SN - 0027-8424 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2308938120 ID - ref1 ER -