Actual versus assumed differences in construal: "Naive realism" in intergroup perception and conflict.

Abstract

We compared partisan group members' construais and beliefs regarding contentious issues, contrasting actual differences construal with their assumptions about those differences. Study 1 dealt with the abortion debate and Study 2 with the racially charged Howard Beach incident. Although many significant examples of construal differences were found, ovcrestimation of such differences was far more common than underestimation. Misperception about the extremity and consistency of conservatives was particularly pronounced. Partisans both studies felt that their own views were less driven by political ideology than those of the other side or their own side. In Study 2, nonpartisans similarly overestimated liberal-conservative differences (again, especially for conservatives). This finding suggests the phenomenon is best characterized a bias not partisan perceptions but the way partisans, and partisanship, perceived. We tend to resolve our perplexity arising out of the experience that other people see the world differently than we see it ourselves by declaring that these others, consequence of some basic intellectual and moral defect, unable to see things as they really are and to react to them in a normal way. We thus imply, of course, that things fact we see them, and that our ways the normal ways. (Ichheiser, 1949, p. 39)