How Education Affects Perception Gaps

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The more education does not affecta your perception gap. The degree to which your friends have similar ideological views increases almost in step function with education level among democrats. Republicans are less more likely to have in their social group or interact with people who have a different ideological view. There is an interesting finding the republicans, which is immediate consumption. But when you look at a kind of cross posting of links, you can very clearly map out media eco systems and what we consider conservative media. It's really interesting, because you do findt peopl who identifi as republican ar conservative,. Even though we have geographically sorted ourselves pretty tightly, there's still a lot of political tension on both sides

What do you think the other side thinks? Guest Dan Vallone is the Director of More in Common U.S.A., an organization that’s been asking Democrats and Republicans that critical question. Their work has uncovered countless “perception gaps” in our understanding of each other. For example, Democrats think that about 30 percent of Republicans support "reasonable gun control," but in reality, it’s about 70 percent. Both Republicans and Democrats think that about 50 percent of the other side would feel that physical violence is justified in some situations, but the actual number for each is only about five percent. “Both sides are convinced that the majority of their political opponents are extremists,” says Dan. “And yet, that's just not true.” Social media encourages the most extreme views to speak the loudest and rise to the top—and it’s hard to start a conversation and work together when we’re all arguing with mirages. But Dan’s insights and the work of More in Common provide a hopeful guide to unraveling the distortions we’ve come to accept and correcting our foggy vision.