Search

Scholars, policy makers, and the general public have expressed growing concern about the possibility of large-scale political violence in the United States. Prior research substantiates these worries, as studies reveal that many American partisans support the use of violence against rival partisans. Here, we propose that support for partisan violence is based in part on greatly exaggerated perceptions of rival partisans’ support for violence. We also predict that correcting these inaccurate “metaperceptions” can reduce partisans’ own support for partisan violence. We test these hypotheses in a series of preregistered, nationally representative, correlational, longitudinal, and experimental studies (total n = 4,741) collected both before and after the 2020 US presidential election and the 2021 US Capitol attack. In Studies 1 and 2, we found that both Democrats’ and Republicans’ perceptions of their rival partisans’ support for violence and willingness to engage in violence were very inaccurate, with estimates ranging from 245 to 442% higher than actual levels. Further, we found that a brief, informational correction of these misperceptions reduced support for violence by 34% (Study 3) and willingness to engage in violence by 44% (Study 4). In the latter study, a follow-up survey revealed that the correction continued to significantly reduce support for violence approximately 1 mo later. Together, these results suggest that support for partisan violence in the United States stems in part from systematic overestimations of rival partisans’ support for violence and that correcting these misperceptions can durably reduce support for partisan violence in the mass public.

Progress toward gender equality is thwarted by underrepresentation of women in political leadership, even as most Americans report they would vote for women candidates. Here we hypothesize that women candidates are often disadvantaged by pragmatic bias, a tendency to withhold support for members of groups for whom success is perceived to be difficult or impossible to achieve. Across six studies (total N=7,895), we test whether pragmatic bias impedes women’s access to a highly significant political leadership position – the U.S. presidency. Across two studies, 2020 Democratic primary voters perceived women candidates to be less electable, and these beliefs were correlated with lower intentions to vote for women candidates (Studies 1-2). Voters identified many reasons women would be less electable than men, including others’ unwillingness to vote for women, biased media coverage, and higher requirements to prove themselves. We next tested interventions to reduce pragmatic bias. Merely correcting misperceptions of Americans’ reported readiness for a woman president did not increase intentions to vote for a woman (Study 3). However, across three experiments (including one preregistered on a nationally representative sample) presenting evidence that women earn as much support as men in U.S. general elections increased Democratic primary voters’ intentions to vote for women presidential candidates, an effect driven by heightened perceptions of these candidates’ electability (Studies 4-6). These findings highlight that social change efforts can be thwarted by people’s sense of what is possible, but this may be overcome by credibly signaling others’ willingness to act collectively.

Schmukle et al. (1) conducted informative conceptual replications of our finding that economic inequality moderates the relationship between income and generosity (2). Schmukle et al. (1) did not find that inequality moderates associations between income and self-reported charitable donations (study 1), first- and second-mover trust game allocations (study 2), and self-reported volunteering (study 3). Their findings contribute to a larger literature documenting patterns both consistent (e.g., ref. 3) and inconsistent (e.g., ref. 4) with our theoretical claim. Note that Schmukle et al.’s (1) conceptual replications differ operationally from ours. First, their generosity measures differed: We used a secondary dataset assessing generosity with a “dictator game” in which participants gave between 0 and 10 raffle tickets to another participant. The dictator game minimizes self-serving … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: Scote{at}rotman.utoronto.ca. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1