Building better bridges

We all know polarisation is bad, that's so obvious as to be hardly worth stating. One difficulty is that there are extremists on all sides : there are vegans who see no irony in issuing death threats, entitled brats who break down in tears because they only have two hundred thousand instagram followers, far right lunatics who hate immigrants, far left communists who want the state to run everything. You can't really make sensible compromises with people who think slavery is a good thing or who believe all bankers should be cooked and eaten. There's no point trying.

But extremists are rare almost by definition. Most vegans are perfectly ordinary, most people can cope without hordes of admirers, most of the left and right don't want to destroy the entire system. The tip-of-the-iceberg cliché would seem to be appropriate here, or possibly the squeaky wheel that gets the grease : the vocal minority are most prominent, but do not really speak for the vast and silent majority. Even fewer of the loudmouths are prepared to do anything more than write a strongly-worded blog post about whatever it is they think they want, which is why things continuously feel as though they're about to collapse but seldom actually do. Such people exert an influence not that dissimilar to terrorism, in that the real danger comes from attempting to placate them, rather than in any actions that they themselves might actually perform. Especially dangerous is to reduce difficult actions to a mere vote. Anyone can cross a box and easily absolve themselves of responsibility. Thus do we get whole societies doing things they don't really want to do.

A recent study of Americans suggested Republicans vastly overestimate the proportion of Democrats who are atheist or agnostic at 36% - four times the reality. In turn, Democrats estimated 44% of Republicans made more than $250,000 (£192,000) a year. Only 2% do.

Surely some of this is due to simple ignorance and random guessing. I haven't got a sodding clue what the average Republican earns or what proportion of Democrats are godless heathens, and why would I ? That's not the sort of thing anyone ever talks about. But I'd probably guess much lower values, especially for the Republican salary : almost a quarter of America earning $250k per year ? That makes no sense. I'm actually a bit surprised the value went that way : my stereotype is more of a county-yokel redneck type, rather than a business tycoon.

Research suggests polarisation can increase voter turnout, which may encourage political leaders to further sharpen divisions. The media, propagandists, and foreign agents can profit from fanning these flames. It all creates the impression of two deeply disconnected groups in societies around the globe - the left and the right.

Which is surely the worst possible way to increase voter turnout, short of threatening to whip everybody.

Prof Anne Wilson, a psychologist at Canada's Wilfrid Laurier University, says: "Misjudgements of the other side aren't arbitrary: people are more likely to overestimate the proportion of opponents who hold the more extreme or unflattering views linked to their party. But we also see blindness to common ground."

As an example, she says the portrayal of US gun control as a "two-sides" issue obscures shared beliefs. This includes strong support among both Democrats and Republicans for background checks and a higher minimum age for gun owners. Common values about child rearing, health care, or civic responsibilities are also found.

What about all those measures suggested to build bridges ? Merging groups on an equal and fair footing, finding common values and suchlike ? Do they actually work ? Reassuringly, yes.

But some of our research, led by Mina Cikara, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, found that when people are shown images suggesting the social networks of different groups are quite overlapping, empathy for members of the opposing group increases. "Seeing a picture indicating that these people share social ties was enough to shrink respondents' empathy gap," says Prof Cikara. 

In studies, we have created new groups in the lab from a simple flip of a coin. We had people join a team that included members of their own racial group, as well as members of another race. Within minutes, participants showed lower levels of racial bias.

I don't dispute the article's advice to be self-aware of how the manipulative techniques for polarisation can affect us as individuals. But I would say unless such advice reaches people en masse, a more practical step to fight hyperpartisanship would be to forbid media sources from taking sides. Do not ban opinion pieces or any particular views. Just prevent any outlet from falling into its own echo chamber - insist that it represents a broad range of political opinions. You have only to compare the BBC, which is mandated to follow this directive, to the British tabloids, which are not, to see how successful this can be. Is the BBC perfect ? No. Is it fifteen million orders of magnitude better than the tabloids ? Yes.

Why the idea of 'snowflakes vs gammons' is bad for us

Historians may puzzle over how the UK's Brexit debate sometimes resembled a battle between snowflakes and gammons. "Snowflake", used dismissively to suggest younger generations might melt if confronted with the harsh realities of life, was readily applied to the stereotypical urban Remainer.