UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Disagreement is crucial to a healthy democracy, according to Mitchell P. Smith, director of the School of International Affairs and professor of international affairs at Penn State. But when perceptions diverge so sharply that people and parties cannot agree on a common interpretation of events or information, it creates a political divide that can erode a democratic society.
In his new book “The Great Perceptual Divide: Identity and Democracy in the U.S. and Britain,” Smith examined the role that identity plays in the political divides in the two nations and offers steps for a return to “good-willed partisanship.” In the following Q&A, Smith discussed his book and how identity politics drive misinformation and undermine institutions. He also offered three potential outcomes of what he calls “the great perceptual divide.”
Q: Where did the idea for “The Great Perceptual Divide” originate?
Smith: The book originated with what was happening in Britain during “Brexit” — the British exit from the European Union that began with a referendum in June 2016. I was following Brexit closely, and what I learned over time was that perceptions of what was happening and the consequences of Brexit were diverging sharply in the population. And yet, as data came in on the likely consequences for British society, those perspectives diverged further rather than converging. Then, when the COVID pandemic hit, when the 2020 election took place in the United States, I saw the same phenomenon taking place. So, the book that originally was going to focus on Brexit increasingly became about perceptual divides and how the accumulation of information, rather than bringing perspectives closer together, was driving them further apart.
Q: Why are people with these diverse perspectives unable to agree on a common narrative today?
Smith: In pluralistic societies, in a healthy democracy, you want there to be a divergence of views and even a divergence of interpretations of new information. For example, the historical record shows that in the United States, those whose favored party occupies the presidency have a much more positive view about things like the economy than those of the opposition party. However, history suggests that when cataclysmic events take place, like the 2008 financial crisis, what is taking place and the harm to the economy that’s taking place is so clear that we see some convergence of views.
Around the time of Brexit, COVID and the 2020 U.S. presidential election, we began to see a phenomenon where that’s not what’s happening. In the book, I explain this by the identities that divide us. In the British case, that divide centers around Brexit, the “Remainers” and the “Leavers.” In the United States the identity divide is about conceptions of who should belong to the political community, who should have rights in the country, what is and is not the role of government, what is the meaning of “freedom,” among other questions. Those views drive interpretations of events, regardless of objective facts.
Q: What’s driving the divide in the United States?
Smith: I start “The Great Perceptual Divide” by referencing a book written by researchers at the University of Minnesota in the 1950s. The book is called “When Prophecy Fails,” and in it the researchers looked at this small group of people who believed that a cataclysmic flood would wipe out life on Earth, though true believers in this prophecy would be rescued by extraterrestrial beings. The researchers found that even after the prophecy did not materialize on the projected date, there was a group within this community who doubled down on their efforts to gain adherents, arguing that they had misinterpreted some signs and that additional signs confirmed the prophecy.
Clearly, what was taking place was that identification with this worldview, this fundamental belief, was driving interpretations of reality. This finding shed light on some of the events taking place in the contemporary United States, where people were interpreting, for example, rules about COVID through their fundamental lens of identity. That is, say I’m someone who does not believe that government is really looking out for the best interests of society but is fundamentally committed to societal control. If I believe that, then I have a very different interpretation about public health recommendations. So, you begin to see, even as evidence about the course of the pandemic accumulates, very different responses to that information.
You want to have partisanship in a healthy democracy. You want people to have different views. But what begins to happen over time is that views no longer converge in response to information that seems very clear to an objective observer. In fact, there are fewer and fewer objective observers. Secondly, the divergent groups begin to look at one another as enemies. One result is that in the United States today, culture wars that speak to and reinforce identities have come to supplant genuine policy debate in which we clash over approaches to a shared challenge. We see this in a variety of areas where the focus of people in political office is to mobilize supporters around identities rather than addressing policy problems. In such an environment, policy problems, such as the growing U.S. federal debt, fester. Rather than drawing lessons from the COVID pandemic about how we can best prepare for the next public health crisis, battles rage over efforts to identify the villains of the pandemic response.
Q: How did we get from a place of respectful disagreement to viewing the opposition as an enemy?
Smith: One factor driving this phenomenon is the demand for disinformation. People driven by different identities are actually searching for information that verifies their views — what psychologists call “confirmation bias.”
In the book, I look at psychological work on cognitive dissonance, which occurs when evidence comes to bear that violates one’s beliefs, one’s sense of self. Threats to an individual’s sense of self are psychologically costly, and the individual engages in an effort to reconcile those contradictions. Embracing disinformation is one way to reconcile that dissonance. Another is an assault on authoritative institutions, from the media to governing institutions — the so-called “Deep State.” If people dismiss evidence because of the source, then it becomes easier for them to reconcile what is happening with their beliefs and to dismiss challenging information. Instead of pursuing information driven by an accuracy motive, people are looking for information to affirm their worldviews.
Q: How do we end the great perceptual divide?
Smith: The factors driving the divide — the undermining of authoritative institutions; the spread of disinformation; the perversion of political accountability where politicians, instead of being held accountable for their policy measures and whether they advance the welfare of society, are held accountable by their party members for whether they vilify the opposition —are self-reinforcing, which suggests that this is likely to continue or perhaps get worse.
I think that if political figures emerge who understand what’s happening and try to separate political issues from identity, it’s possible to make some progress in bringing people back together. For instance, making an argument that the government is looking after your best interests and you should listen to the recommendations of the government is the wrong approach for some groups because it pushes up against the fundamental beliefs of people who are, for a wide variety of reasons, skeptical of government. Rather than trying to convince them to change those views, simply divorce the two things and suggest policies that benefit people. A podcast produced during the pandemic, for example, demonstrated that when encouraged to take the COVID vaccine because of recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a skeptical group was entirely unconvinced. When the argument shifted to a focus on preventing the hospitalizations and deaths experienced by peers, and the recommendations of physicians, views began to soften somewhat. If we have savvy politicians who can begin to make common sense arguments in ways that don’t run afoul of people’s identities, there might be some progress in bringing people together on common views, or at least shared definitions of policy challenges.
Healthy pluralism means that there are partisan divisions, but that when something of a dramatic magnitude occurs, like a pandemic or financial crisis, perceptions of what’s going on and what needs to happen begin to converge. That happened with the 2008 financial crisis, but that’s sort of the last time it happened. In all the crises that we’ve seen since, views have grown further and further apart over time, even with the accumulation of evidence — for example, that the announced 2020 presidential election outcome was accurate. If we can return to a place where, as evidence comes out, people have different partisan takes on what’s happening but there’s sufficient convergence to drive a policy response that says, “here are some ways we can meaningfully address this issue,” then we can shore up political institutions, stabilize democracy, and react more quickly to the next crisis.