Overestimating the Social Costs of Political Belief Change (WP-24-25)
Trevor Spelman, Abdo Elnakouri, Nour Kteily, and Eli Finkel
How do U.S. partisans expect members of their political ingroup to react when they shift away from the typical view of their party (e.g., a Democrat adopting a more conservative stance on private gun ownership)? And how well do these expectations align with actual reactions? Five studies (N = 2,655) employing diverse research methods—including surveys, behavioral outcomes, live participant interactions, and qualitative measures—revealed that partisans’ expectations are systematically and substantially miscalibrated: they overestimate how much they would be socially sanctioned for dissenting belief change with an average weighted effect size (d) of .84. The researchers find that this overestimation is partially driven by self-protective egocentric bias and show that it decreases via an intervention that promotes perspective taking. Additional results revealed that these miscalibrated expectations predict an increased likelihood of self-censorship. By examining the subtle social forces that exert pressures toward ingroup conformity, this work offers insights into how we can foster more open political dialogue within political groups.