In October 2020, two rival candidates for office in Utah ran an unusual TV ad together. Incumbent Republican Gov. Spencer Cox and Democratic challenger Chris Peterson appeared at the same venue to note that both were “dedicated to the American values of freedom, democracy and justice for all people,” as he said Cox, and that “our shared values transcend our political differences,” as Peterson said.
However, these guarantees are unusual and may be overwhelmed by other messages. In fact, a new study co-authored by an MIT scholar finds that American citizens likely overestimate the extent to which their political opponents seek to undermine democracy, a finding that presents both bad news and good news.
An ominous implication of the research is that, believing that their political opponents want to restrict democracy, some supporters will justify the erosion of democratic norms on their own side.
“This can lead to a death spiral for democracy,” says Alex “Sandy” Pentland, an MIT professor and co-author of a new paper detailing the results, which are based on surveys and experiments with thousands of Americans.
As the paper notes, false claims about the 2020 election by former President Donald Trump and others, as well as fake news about alleged election fraud, have made such beliefs common among Republicans; at the same time, Democratic Party leaders publicly emphasize that many Republican-backed measures endanger democracy.
However, the most positive implication of the findings is that supporters on both sides largely acknowledge that they support democracy, to a greater degree than their rivals think, and seem receptive to hearing that their political opponents do as well, perhaps through approaches like the Utah joint. ad.
Pentland adds: “We find that making people aware of how much voters on each side support democracy has the effect of dramatically lowering the temperature of toxic polarization and even changing which candidates they say they will vote for . Knowing that opposing groups also support democracy can be a basic requirement for maintaining a strong democracy.” For this reason, he points out, “there is also hope in these findings, and that is that by reducing fear among supporters, we can strengthen democratic institutions.”
The paper, “Why voters who value democracy participate in democratic backsliding,” appears in Nature Human Behavior. The authors are Alia Braley, PhD candidate in political science at the University of California, Berkeley; Gabriel Lenz, professor of political science at UC Berkeley; Dhaval Adjodah ’11, SM ’13, PhD ’19, Schmidt Futures Philanthropic Research Initiative Fellow and former MIT Research Scientist; Hossein Rahnama, associate professor at Metropolitan University of Toronto and former visiting professor at the MIT Media Lab; and Pentland, professor of media arts and sciences and the Toshiba Professor in the Media Lab.
To conduct the study, the researchers conducted an online survey and then a pair of experiments, using the Lucid and Mechanical Turk platforms. The survey asked a representative sample of 1,973 US citizens to rate their political opponents’ willingness to subvert democratic norms, and to state their own willingness to do so, when presented with seven types of actions undemocratic, such as limiting electoral colleges, banning rallies, and more.
Overall, the results were similar among members of the two major American parties; Democrats estimated that Republicans would be willing to subvert 5.0 Democratic norms on average, while they are willing to subvert 1.5 themselves; Republicans estimated that Democrats would be willing to subvert 5.2 Democratic norms on average, while they were willing to subvert 1.2 themselves.
Individuals who believed that their opponents were relatively more willing to stop democratic practices were themselves more willing to abandon such norms. Scholars believe this trend is exacerbated by the debunked claims of leaders like Trump.
In general, people “have overlooked the importance of would-be authoritarians’ frequent claims that their opponents are violating democratic rules,” says Lenz, alluding to similar claims by leaders such as former President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil . He adds: “It makes his supporters, in this case Republicans, tolerate the erosion of democratic norms by politicians like Trump. Instead of perceiving Trump as undermining democracy, they see him as a level playing field that they believe he’s already leaned heavily against them.”
However, research also shows that people are receptive to valid information showing that their opponents are determined to uphold democratic practices. In an experiment with 2,545 US citizens, researchers asked respondents about their perceptions of rule breaking, then divided them into treatment and control groups and gave the first group feedback on how their perceptions with facts.
On a scale of 0 to 1, using the same seven cases from the initial survey, participants who had received factual feedback only rated their political opponents’ willingness to subvert democratic norms at 0.40, while those who did not receive factual comments rated their opponents. intention to subvert democratic norms at 0.64. People in the treatment group were less willing to break democratic norms themselves and, in hypothetical election scenarios, were less willing to vote for candidates who support subversion of norms.
In another online experiment, this time involving 1,973 US citizens, the researchers changed the format of the previous experiment to reduce the chance that respondents could anticipate follow-up questions. The results were broadly similar, although, in an additional observation, the scholars found that both Republican and Democratic participants who reported higher levels of ethnic antagonism were more likely to support subverted democratic norms.
Overall, the results of the two subsequent experiments suggest that better information about political opponents helps to increase trust levels; when Democrats see that many Republicans value democracy, and when Republicans see that many Democrats value democracy, at least there is an opening for people to avoid the downward spiral that the US may be facing.
“This work has important implications at a time when many people are looking for solutions to toxic polarization,” says Braley. “People will be more willing to defend democracy when they are less afraid of the other side.”
He adds: “One possibility when facing a politician like Trump is to launch a counter-narrative aimed at Republicans, showing that Democrats really will stand up for democracy. According to our research, this should make Republicans more willing to be held accountable to their representatives”.
It is not clear how to do this on a large scale. While the announcement of Utah’s 2020 candidates was likely effective, it may be difficult to reach large numbers of citizens. The researchers, like their colleagues elsewhere in the US, say they will need to continue studying what approaches seem to help strengthen bipartisan support for democracy.
“Our next step is to take these findings and test the best mechanisms for reducing these mutual fears among supporters in real-world contexts,” says Braley.
