People are consistently and confidently wrong about those with opposing views

People are consistently and confidently wrong about those with opposing views

New research from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at King’s College London, in partnership with the University of Oxford, has shown that, despite being highly confident that they can understand the minds of people with opposing viewpoints, the assumptions humans make about others are often wrong.

The research, published in Scientific Reports, explores the psychology behind why people come to the wrong conclusions about others, and suggests how society could start to change that.

256 participants were recruited from the USA and split evenly between those with left and right leaning political views. They were presented with various political statements (e.g. Immigrants are beneficial to society) and asked to rate on a 5-point scale how much they agreed with it (i.e. strongly agree to strongly disagree).

For each statement, the participant would then be presented with someone else’s response to the same statement. If the two shared a similar opinion, they were deemed “in-group” to one another. If the two held different opinions, they were deemed “out-group” to each other.  The participant was then asked to predict the other person’s response on a second statement (e.g. all women should have access to legal abortion), and to state their confidence in their answer, from ‘Not at all’ to ‘Extremely’.

Participants could then choose to receive up to five more of the other person's responses to different statements to help the participant build up a better idea – or “representation” – of the other person’s mind. After receiving any further information, participants could update their initial prediction and reclarify their confidence on their final answer.

Analysis of the data found that, even though participants were prepared to seek out as much – and often more – information about someone they disagreed with, their predictions were consistently incorrect, even after receiving further information about them. Participants demonstrated a high degree of confidence in their answers, suggesting that participants thought they had a good understanding of the people in their out-group, despite this not being the case. In comparison, participants could consistently make accurate predictions about those in their in-group with less information.

Dr Bryony Payne, a postdoctoral researcher at King’s IoPPN and the study’s first author said, “Our study shows that people have a good understanding of people who are similar to themselves and their confidence in their understanding is well-placed. However, our understanding of people with different views to our own is demonstrably poor. The more confident we are that we can understand them, the more likely it is that we are wrong. People have poor awareness of their inability to understand people that differ from themselves.

“There are clear consequences to this lack of awareness, and we have seen countless real-world examples. The recent UK riots were borne out of a small group of people who were probably very confident in their (mis)understanding of the views and beliefs of Muslims and asylum seekers, and these misconceptions are often fueled by disinformation on social media or echoed back to them by others within their in-group.”

Dr Caroline Catmur, a Reader in Cognitive Psychology at King’s IoPPN and the study’s senior author said, “We live in an increasingly polarised society and many people are very confident in their understanding of those who don’t share their beliefs. However, our research also shows that people are willing to reconsider once they are made aware of their mistakes.

“While there is no quick fix in a real-world setting, if everyone interacted with a more diverse group of people, talked directly to them and got to know them, it’s likely we would understand each other better. Conversations with people who hold different beliefs could help challenge our incorrect assumptions about each other.”

This study was funded by the John Templeton Foundation.

Ends

For more information, please contact Patrick O’Brien (Media manager) on patrick.1.obrien@kcl.ac.uk

Poorer representation of minds underpins less accurate mental state inference for out-groups (DOI10.21203/rs.3.rs-4364745/v1) (Bryony Payne, Geoffrey Bird, Caroline Catmur) was published in Scientific Reports.

About King’s College London and the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience

King’s College London is amongst the top 35 universities in the world and top 10 in Europe (THE World University Rankings 2023), and one of England’s oldest and most prestigious universities.

With an outstanding reputation for world-class teaching and cutting-edge research, King’s maintained its sixth position for ‘research power’ in the UK (2021 Research Excellence Framework).

King's has more than 33,000 students (including more than 12,800 postgraduates) from some 150 countries worldwide, and some 8,500 staff. The Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience (IoPPN) at

King’s is a leading centre for mental health and neuroscience research in Europe. It produces more highly cited outputs (top 1% citations) on psychiatry and mental health than any other centre (SciVal 2021), and on this metric has risen from 16th (2014) to 4th (2021) in the world for highly cited neuroscience outputs. In the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF), 90% of research at the IoPPN was deemed ‘world leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’ (3* and 4*). World-leading research from the IoPPN has made, and continues to make, an impact on how we understand, prevent and treat mental illness, neurological conditions, and other conditions that affect the brain.

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