Americans misperceive the frequency and format of political debate.
Journal
Scientific reports
ISSN: 2045-2322
Titre abrégé: Sci Rep
Pays: England
ID NLM: 101563288
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
06 Mar 2024
06 Mar 2024
Historique:
received:
05
07
2023
accepted:
20
02
2024
medline:
7
3
2024
pubmed:
7
3
2024
entrez:
6
3
2024
Statut:
epublish
Résumé
Disagreement over divergent viewpoints seems like an ever-present feature of American life-but how common is debate and with whom do debates most often occur? In the present research, we theorize that the landscape of debate is distorted by social media and the salience of negativity present in high-profile spats. To understand the true landscape of debate, we conducted three studies (N = 2985) across online and lab samples. In contrast to the high-profile nature of negative debates with strangers, we found that people most commonly debate close contacts, namely family members and good friends. In addition, they often report feeling positive after engaging in debate. We then directly measured misperceptions regarding debate in a representative sample of Americans (N = 1991). We found that Americans systematically overestimated how often others engage in debate. This overestimation extended across debate partners (family members, good friends, acquaintances, coworkers, and strangers) and contexts (in-person and online; p's < 0.001, d's > 0.98), most strongly overestimating how often Americans debate strangers online. This misprediction may be psychologically costly: overestimating how often Americans debate strangers online significantly predicted greater hopelessness in the future of America. Together, our findings suggest that Americans may experience a false reality about the landscape of debate which can unnecessarily undermine their hope about the future.
Identifiants
pubmed: 38448516
doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-55131-4
pii: 10.1038/s41598-024-55131-4
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
5565Informations de copyright
© 2024. The Author(s).
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