We picture the other side as more extreme and more united than it is. We get our own side wrong too.

Believing there is only one right answer makes us less tolerant. Most of us recognize that pluralism exists.

The perception gap is a mistake, not a real disagreement. That makes it the easier one to close

Two people describe the same politician. One writes, “A disgusting monster destroying America.” The other writes, “I disagree with his policies.” Give them a policy survey and their answers look almost identical: taxes, immigration, health care, all broadly similar. What differs is not the belief, but the volume.

Much of what looks like division is volume. And even within a single party, people agree far less than they think.

The referee stops calling fouls

Picture a referee at a game between two rival teams. As long as he stays neutral, both sides play straighter, because nobody wants to foul in front of a fair judge. Now let the referee pick a side. He does not stop blowing the whistle. He stops blowing it for the same fouls.

This is consistent with what we found with 2,400 Americans. Some people divided $10 between two strangers, one who loved Trump and one who opposed him, while keeping none of it for themselves. A bystander could then judge their behavior and dock their bonus for the split. When bystanders broadly agreed on what was fair, the even split drew the least punishment, while the most lopsided split drew the most. Once the crowd polarized, that discipline broke down. A partisan bystander punished a clean 50-50 split about as much as a fair-minded one punished a split that gave everything to one side. So the splits became about 50 percent more lopsided than they were in front of a fair-minded crowd.

The main takeaway here is that the existing division is not solely driven by idiosyncratic preferences for polarization but is also shaped and amplified by the (anticipated) polarization around us. Whether this impression is correct, and what to do about it if not, is a core consideration that I am going to turn to next.

We imagine a more extreme country than the one we live in

Why would a referee stop calling fouls? Because polarization runs on a story we tell ourselves about the other side, and that story is often wrong. Think of the........

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