← Outrage Overload: Rethinking politics, division, and media
Outrage Overload: Rethinking politics, division, and media
58. The Truth Behind Political Division: Are We Really That Different? - James Coan
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- [00:04]
A
Welcome to Outrage Overload, a science podcast about outrage and lowering the temperature. This is episode 58. What if I told you that much of the political division we see today is based on misperceptions? Skewed views of the other side that make them seem more extreme and threatening than they really are. And what if there was a way to correct these distortions and build trust without even asking people to leave their media bubbles? With a media ecosystem that thrives on outrage, and with political divides feeling wider than ever, it's easy to fall into the trap of seeing others as enemies. But the reality is often more nuanced. Research shows we're actually more alike than we think. Yet these misperceptions continue to drive toxic polarization, making it harder to work together and address real problems. Today's guest has been tackling this issue head on, offering creative solutions that go beyond conversations and dialogues. They're working on innovative tools and strategies to correct these misperceptions at scale, working with social media creators, journalists, educators, and even artists.
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Hi, I'm James Cohen, co founder and executive director of More Like Us. We correct dangerous political misperceptions of each other at scale.
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With years of experience in depolarization efforts, James is uniquely equipped to tackle the challenges of scaling these solutions. Stay tuned to hear James share his insights on why correcting misperceptions is critical, how it can spread, and what simple actions you can take to help reduce polarization today. Let's hear all about it right now. James Cohen, thank you so much for making time for our little show.
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B
David. Yeah, thank you so much for having me.
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A
So there are so many of these organizations and I know we've kind of talked about that a little bit in our pre discussions and, you know, lot of them that I've seen, a lot of them that I've worked with are a little bit more focused, are sort of focused on conversations, you know, sort of braver angels crossing party lines, you know, many others. And I think as a side effect, they're looking at changing people's perception of the other side just through those conversations. But you're kind of attacking this perception thing sort of head on. That's you're sort of directly going after these misperceptions. So, you know, tell us a little bit about that and, you know, sort of directly changing that behavior and kind of kind of explaining why you think that's the way to go about it.
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B
Yeah, absolutely. So it is true More Like Us is different from many these other organizations. And I have a lot of experience with some of these organizations. So I went to my first then Better Angels event in 2017 and I've had many national level roles within of Braver Angels. But yes, typically they focus on conversations, dialogue, interpersonal communications. And I really care about scale. And it can be difficult to try to scale conversations, certainly to bring people to workshops, but also to convey how to have conversations in a way that's going to be productive. Meanwhile, there's quite a bit of research that shows the potential benefits of, of correcting these misperceptions of each other. These misperceptions tend to be skewed in one direction, thinking that they're more extreme, more threatening across the political spectrum than we tend to imagine. But there was no organization that was directly trying to correct them. So I'm also close with an organization like More in Common that does a lot of research in this space, but that is their lane. Actually, they introduced me to one of More Like Us as co founders because they explicitly said we're not going to do extensive outreach. We're just going to cover research and explore this topic in greater and greater depth.
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A
Interesting.
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B
Yeah.
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So let's talk about that scale issue a little bit because that comes up all the time when I'm talking to academics about all these efforts. You know, they're going, hey, these conversations are great. You might convince four people. But. But you can't take this to there's 300 million people in the US and 150 million voters or whatever. And so it doesn't scale. And so they're very pessimistic about, I mean, they like the idea in general, but then they're still kind of pessimistic whether it can scale. So tell us a little bit about how what your approach kind of tackles that scaling challenge.
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B
Well, sure. So we're looking a lot at the information environment. What do people see and hear about Those who identify in the other political party tend to vote for those in the other political party. And we have three initiatives, all of which I think have some ability to scale. So one is that we're working with content creators, those in social media, but it's also our first entry point into the arts in general. So what do we hear about people and see when we go on social media or in the future look at film or TV or listen to songs or see plays? Right. There's all sorts of avenues to see more about other people. Then we're doing some work. We have something called Similarity Hub. We've aggregated a lot of survey data from places like Gallup and Pew that show overlaps between Democrats and Republicans. We have hundreds of examples, at least 20 topics, all the hot button ones you can imagine. And we're working to test how this can integrate into news articles. When journalists write about a hot button topic, show that actually there's quite a bit of research showing that we have some in common, we have some common ground. And this can also be used by civic leaders, religious leaders. And finally, we have a lesson plan presentation for students, but also even adults about this. These political misperceptions, sometimes known as the perception gap. And again, right. There's millions of students in schools, and this can get into curricula and standards and become institutionalized in many ways. So we just see ways to kind of hit people from many sides, many angles. You know, just they don't necessarily have to do all that much. Just. Right. If we do our job correctly. Right. Just by living in the world and seeing things and being, you know, listening to podcasts and whatever. Right. Some of these. This information will people just get exposed to it.
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A
So in practice, where are you at with that? Because it seems like, you know, where we're kind of getting in our media bubbles and we almost seek out this kind of affirming information that keeps telling us how the other side is sort of evil incarnate and, you know, and it's hard to get away from that. And we kind of feed off it, we like it. And it's almost like when we hear those counter narratives, we sort of push back a little bit. Right. Because we keep being told how terrible they are and we don't want to see this story that says they're not that bad or there's some people there. So there's sort of two aspects of that. Is one is like, how far has that gotten? Like, how. How would I run across that content? And then I want to talk a little bit about sort of a. I'm sure that there's sort of a both sides ism argument that we're going to have to talk about.
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B
Sure. Well. Right. So more like us. I was introduced to some of my first co founders a couple of years ago. So no, I do not want to pretend that there is vast amounts of this content out there and just a question of looking for it. Right. This is still in its fairly early stages, but when it comes to social media, we're working with a group with over a hundred thousand followers called Left, Middle Right. And we have a mnemonic way to remember kind of what kind of content that would be worthwhile called cast cast Casting the other side in a better light shows stands for showing them as more complex, admirable, similar, worthy of togetherness, collaboration, friendship than might otherwise imagine. Then we're working with a group called Trusting News to eventually introduce similarity hub to more journalists and working with various school districts. And there's a whole network called the Civics now coalition of 300 or so groups focused on civics to expand in. In that domain. But it is true that this is relatively early stage. We're working with quite a few academics to test the effectiveness of these different interventions to both improve them, but also to prove that, you know, these avenues are worthwhile and should be pursued because they could scale.
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Yeah, that would be great.
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Yeah.
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And so, yeah, I'd love to see how that proceeds. So we definitely need to follow up. You know, I get accused. Everybody kind of in this space probably does it different times sort of get. Get accused of the sort of both sides ism thing. And, and you know, this is usually kind of argument that you're taking away the true concerns about the other side, like they legitimately have these flaws or these problems and you're taking away, you know, you're downplaying the dangers or whatever, you know, and I, and I sort of follow kind of Zachary Elwood on this, if you're familiar with some of his reading and this idea that, you know, you can simultaneously believe the other side's worse and maybe a bigger contributor to the problem, while not always framing everything in the worst possible light and trying to find where there are reasonable positions, you know, reasonable arguments within those, within those camps that you wouldn't find. You know, you, you could kind of understand why they think that we still might disagree. You still may find them to be a bigger part of the problem, but if you want to depolarize, you can still do that. And simultaneously holding those two positions can be a little hard for us. And so I'm curious your take on a. If you sort of get accused of the both sidesism thing a little bit and then your kind of take on it.
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B
Well, I'd love to be well known enough to get attacked and be accused of all sorts of terrible things. But, you know, so I should say that most of what we cover is kind of like everyday Americans. And so when it, when we look at survey data of everyday Americans, there's incredible symmetry between Republicans and Democrats in terms of the extent of their misperceptions of each other. You know, occasionally Republicans will be a little more distorted than Democrats or vice versa. But on average it's hard to say that one side is more distorted than another when it comes to like causes, you know, which is what, you know, a big driver of a question like that. I tend to point more toward perverse incentives then like bad people. So there are so many perverse incentives in news media, social media, electoral systems and, and even among fellow non profits, right. To kind of advocate for one's cause, but to disparage those on the other, other side. And yet within that probably there are some people who are more opportunistic than others. But if one can get rich or famous by demeaning the other side, some people are going to do it. And I think one area that more like us cannot cover at the moment, but I want other groups to focus on is trying to reverse some of these perverse incentives.
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Yeah, I mean it is powerful. I think this is some of the reason why when you see some of the studies about these misperceptions, some of the ones talk about how they don't have a lasting effect because they're sort of a rubber band effect. You know, you sort of get pulled back into your media bubble and your, and all that. So it, it's like a never ending effort to kind of counter that narrative all the time. So you know, when we talk about root causes, what are, what are some of your thoughts about that? And you know, have we determined that the changing perception sort of is one of these root cause? You know, this misperception is a root cause or sort of an effect? Or does it, does it even matter?
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No, that's good. In general, I would say it's more of an effect. But I also don't think that just fixing the root cause will magically lead to all the solutions that we seek. So to me, I think there's some root causes that are fairly hard to address. At least let's say one root cause. We went from basically a four party system, all these different alliances with know more liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats and there has been ideological sorting. So it's easier to imagine cleavages because the parties have become more distinct. It's easier to think about them as binaries. But then all these other incentives, perverse incentives, have either gotten worse or can be activated in worse ways. Now that, right. The news media environment has Balkanized, right there, there are these more specific channels. Social media used to not exist right now it does and can segment people. Electoral systems, gerrymandering, closed primaries used to be somewhat problematic, but in many cases they can encourage candidates and politicians to Demonize the other side or to not work with the other side side because that might be electorally advantageous. And then right. There's some nonprofits that.
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Right.
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Sometimes the best way to raise money to get attention is to right. Castigate to, to say terrible things about those on the other side. But say, say we magically could change all of these incentives like overnight. Right. All you would get is less bad. You wouldn't really get anything that necessarily unites us that just kind of automatically balloons without an idea like cast, like seeing others as more complex, admirable, similar and worthy of togetherness. And then generating content that focuses on that. It just kind of gets, is get up to neutral. But I think we should go beyond just neutral and also and an approach like misperceptions. I mean, there's pretty amazing data about just how much our perceptions have changed in group out group over time. I was looking at some Gallup data. I mean in the late 1950s, is it okay for whites and blacks to marry 4% in 1958, you know, or go back to the 30s, you know, should married women work if the husband can provide is like less than 20% said yes and. Right. I mean these numbers are totally different. It's weight, it's, it's over 90% say for you know, whites and blacks marrying at, at the moment. So. Right. We know that views of each other in group out group can change for better or worse. But I think we have to be proactive about it and have messages that actually achieve that rather than just saying let's get rid of the bad incentives and everything will be solved. I think that's a very important part of it. So this is not just Sisyphean and we just try and you know, it just rolls right back on us. But. Right. I think both are, are helpful to the process. And this, you know, maybe is a little more guaranteed it doesn't run up against, you know, so much entrenched political, so many entrenched political interests that may hinder say a bill that may change incentives.
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A
You know, a lot of folks have talked about sort of somehow making our political identity maybe a little bit less salient in our lives. Do you think changing these, I mean, do you agree with that as potentially improving things and that do you think sort of changing these perceptions can maybe have an impact on that or maybe we find a better way, a better identity than choosing a political side?
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I mean, I generally think it's, it's good the, the, the relative benefit of focusing on misperceptions is that they're, they're easier.
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Right.
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They're not normative things like you should do this. It's just kind of like they're more similar. You're like, oh, okay. I mean some people might attack the, the data but we're not asking people to do very much. Right. It's sort of their emotions and attitudes just change by seeing and hearing. So there's something known as the strengthening Democracy challenge. Stanford ran there's about 25 interventions that they tested. They collected even more, eight minutes or less. I am unfamiliar with interventions that tried that particular approach like trying to lower the importance of the identity. I should say that the data that I'm familiar with is that there aren't that many people actually that, that put politics as like the top identity More in common just came out with research about misperceptions and religion and for many people identity is like, you know, parent or sibling or community member, something like that tend to be more important. So there can be misperceptions of the relative importance of this. And also the people who tend to post on, you know, social media and be vocal about this do tend to be more extreme and probably are more likely to have those kind of unusual, you know, identity orders. Um, so, so right. I mean there's a few issues there that cause me to emphasize misperceptions more. But I'm not saying that that's necessarily a bad approach.
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Well, and I think you're right about that. That, that it itself, you know, the idea that we are. Our political identity comes front is somewhat a misperception and partially because of social media in particular. But also if you, if you watch partisan media or other, other things. I guess I'm curious if you think that the approach you're doing there has some potential to offset some of that characteristic there is of social media, that kind of where the extreme voices dominate by just getting, creating more, not going beyond just your content creators, maybe somehow creating a space. Because a lot of people I think have retracted from social media because you go on there and say hey, I'm not that mad about gun control or vice versa or you know, I'm a gun owner too. And oh no, you know, you can't do that in this forum. Right. And so these folks with these kind of cross cutting ideas have just like left social media like there's no place for them because it's just not going to work in any of these forums. So I'm just curious if there's some way, if you think there's some way Maybe to boost that a little bit and bring some of those regular voices back into social media,
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maybe. I would say that the hope that we have is that some of this content can go viral, right? In terms of people tend to like and share content that has emotions other than sadness. So what is an arousing emotion? And often that's anger, outrage, fear. But in theory, it could also be surprise, love, hope. There's other kinds of emotions. And I'm very interested in. There's an emotion wheel, it's like a color wheel of emotions from deceased professor Robert Plutchick. And we can kind of play around with that and see kind of the emotions that we want to emphasize and those that we want to diminish. And that actually goes into kind of like my entire idea of what we should be accomplishing here, which is to add trust and subtract factors that tend to diminish trust. And trust is actually kind of, you know, it's both an emotion, but also, you know, there's some realistic parts to it. But then there's an overblown sense of fear or threatening and a sense of inferiority of the other side, cognitive and moral inferiority, which sometimes gets shorthanded, stupid and evil. And so content that can reduce this overblown sense of threat, overblown sense of cognitive moral inferiority, and emphasize trust is really what I'm trying to achieve, both between people, between everyday people and institutions, those higher and maybe some social pecking order, and then also dissuade people from making things worse. And as we've talked about, incentives, right? Disincentivizing, changing these perverse incentives that are so rife in the system right now.
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All right, so let's talk to listeners now and say if they want to help, they want to reduce these political divides, what practical steps would you say they can do? How can they contribute, you know, to this changing perceptions and maybe improving trust?
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Yeah, absolutely. So. So normally, you know, the. The recommendations here, which aren't bad, are kind of focused on changing one, you know, people individually, you know, go read a wider array of. Of newspapers, go have a conversation. Those are fine, but it's not what I focus on. The easiest thing for most people to do is to tell others we're actually more similar than we think. Right? They're less threatening than we imagine. Just spread that simple message and go to Similarity Hub and find lots and lots of data points. Go to morelike us.org there's all sorts of data points if you want to defend that particular point for Those who want to do more. I mean, you're welcome to contact me at james@morelikeus.org I mean, writing op eds, there's so, you know, there's so many opportunities for people to make new nonprofits in this space, which might be surprising because there are hundreds, but those are hundreds of. Mostly dialogue groups, but there's very little that's trying to. Very few that are trying to change institutions that are dealing with many incentives beyond electoral systems that are dissuading people from doing things badly and just kind of copying more like us and trying to generate more content that can change our emotions toward each other. So become a social entrepreneur or write if that. That interests you, and I'm happy to talk to you if you're. If you are. But, you know, if that's a little too much, because it will be for most people, just spreading the fact that we're more similar and they're less threatening than we imagine is a great start.
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Yeah, that's great. So that the Similarity Hub is that easy to find on the website, or is that a separate place?
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Yeah, well, so it is separate. It can be found through the website, but it's also just similarityhub.org perfect.
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Okay. Yeah, we'll make sure we have all those links in the show notes. So if you're listening now, similarityhub.org and your. Your main website is. Is it just more like us.org morelike us.org? yeah, so, and then you. You mentioned your email. So everybody can reach out to you if they have specific questions. I don't think you'll get flooded, but hopefully you'll get some feedback. That'd be great. Yeah, I really think that's great. I mean, I think there's opportunity for people to write more op EDS than people think. It's not as hard as you think to write op eds, and there are a lot of publications that may not make it in the Wall Street Journal or something, but you might get in some local paper or other media sources. So it's not as hard as people think to do op eds. So don't be too intimidated by it. Well, James Cohen, thank you so much again for making time for our little program.
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David. Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
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That is it for this episode of the Outrage Overload podcast. For links to everything we talked about on this episode, go to Outrage Overload. If you enjoyed this episode. If you found it interesting, please tell some friends about it, post it to your social media. Better yet, text someone. Even better. Talk to someone in real life. Tell them about this show. I really appreciate it. Okay. See you in a week or two, Sam.