America's Perception Gaps

Overview

Building off our Hidden Tribes report, in 2019 we set out to discover whether Republicans and Democrats could separate perception from reality. On issues including climate change, patriotism, sexual assault, police conduct and more, we asked Americans what they themselves believed and what they estimated people on the other side believed. We were then able to calculate the difference between the predictions and reality. What we found is Americans have a deeply distorted understanding of each other. We call this a “Perception Gap”–the gap between what we imagine an opposing group believes and what that group actually believes. Overall, Democrats and Republicans imagine almost twice as many of their political opponents as reality hold views they consider “extreme”. Even on the most controversial issues in our national debates, Americans are less divided than most of us think.

In 2022, we applied our perception gap methodology to our “history wars”–the debate over whether we should see our national history as a source of pride or a source of shame. We asked thousands of Americans their views of American history and national identity and what they understood to be the views of their fellow Americans. Similar to our 2019 findings, we found a majority of Americans across political affiliations agree on fundamental ideas about our national history and how it should be taught.

Our perception gap studies are frequently cited in the media and have been featured in over a hundred scholarly publications. Perception gap studies and tools such as our quiz, are regularly used in curriculums and programming addressing polarization.