The United States has faced increasing polarization in its politics in the past few decades. Politics has become more emotionally charged, which is known as affective polarization according to Joel Achenbach. This is the result of the increase of the perception gap, where members of opposing parties have misperceptions of each other. This is the main cause for the increase in polarization, and in order to depolarize, people’s perceptions of the opposing party need to be changed. 

Democrats and Republicans have grown apart and view the opposing party as a threat to their existence. Authors Mark Murray and Alexandra Marquez have shown that approval ratings for presidents have become more polarized. During Harry Truman’s presidency in 1948, 68% of Democrats and 50% of Republicans approved his performance. During Richard Nixon’s presidency, the gap between Republicans’ and Democrats’ approval increased to 47 points. During Barack Obama’s presidency, it grew to 72 points, and it increased to 79 points during Donald Trump’s presidency. Jennifer McCoy and Murat Somer’s paper “Overcoming Polarization” states that “elected officials around the world are subverting democracy from within by using polarizing political strategies in their bids to gain or retain power”. McCoy and Somer also list Donald Trump as someone who has used polarization to win the presidency. Kate Berman goes into additional detail of how he has done this, writing that through the emphasis of economic inequality, the portrayal that white people have been left behind in today’s society, and attacks on the Democratic party, Trump has gained the support of poorer people and non-college-educated people. This is just one example of how politicians have used pathos, or appeals to emotion. 

As Rachel Kleinfeld explains, many Americans, regardless of party, share beliefs and policy preferences. However, many have inaccurate beliefs of the other party and fail to see the commonalities. People believe that those in the opposing party are likely to have extreme opposite beliefs. This is particularly true of those who are most politically involved and are at the extreme ends of the political spectrum. As a result, people dislike and distrust the opposing party. There is a connection between the perception of one’s beliefs and one’s character. Daniel Yudkin, Stephen Hawkins, and Tim Dixon report on their findings of how polarization affects Americans. Those with a wider perception gap are more likely to believe that people with different views than their own are evil. The consumption of any form of media, from social media to newspapers,  has led to a wider perception gap. Surprisingly, receiving a higher education has been shown to lead to a wider perception gap among Democrats, but not Republicans. This may be due to higher educated Democrats likely having friends that only share their beliefs.

Recognizing the fact that there are similarities between both parties is the key to lessening the perception gap. While the two parties indeed do not agree on some issues, and some party members do hold beliefs that are not mainstream, there is agreement among most people on several issues. The Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland surveyed more than 80,000 Americans from either party on various issues. On the issue of immigration, a bipartisan majority were in favor of providing a visa to undocumented workers who have been in the U.S for an extended period of time. Another issue with bipartisan agreement was on the issue of police reform: a large bipartisan majority supported the required use of body cameras on police officers and the requirement of police officers to intervene when another officer is using excessive force. 

There have been experiments to find interventions that could help in bridging the perception gap, and thus reducing affective polarization. Kleinfeld gives four of the most popular interventions. The first is correcting identity and policy misperceptions about the other party through awareness campaigns. Republicans tend to think Democrats are people of color, sexual minorities, and atheists. Democrats tend to think Republicans are wealthy, older, evangelical Christians. The most common demographic of both parties are middle-aged, white, nonevangelical Christians. When people’s misperceptions were corrected, affective polarization decreased. There is a similar situation in policy beliefs. Both Democrats and Republicans think they are ideologically far apart. When people were made aware that there were shared beliefs, affective polarization decreased and people became more receptive to each other. 

The second intervention is creating a common identity. There have been studies that demonstrate creating a common American identity can reduce affective polarization. However, some research has shown that de-emphasizing racial identity has led to minorities to become less engaged with the common identity. Some scholars have tested approaches that create a common identity as well as other identities, which were found to help with engagement. 

The third intervention involves bringing groups together to have social relationships over differences. There have been programs to bring Democrats and Republicans together to discuss across the divide. This has shown to be effective in reducing prejudice, but only if the discussions are well moderated and if certain conditions are met, such as two participants being in the same economic class. If these conditions are not met, this intervention has a chance of deepening bias. 

Finally, the fourth intervention is changing the structure of electoral systems. There are several solutions given here, such as ranked choice voting and creating proportional representation systems. The idea behind these is to reduce the emphasis on partisanship and place more emphasis on the individual politician, as well as to allow a wider range of political options to be represented. By changing the electoral systems, politicians have less incentive to polarize the public and those with extremist views are less likely to be elected.

Many Amercians do hold similar beliefs. Finding and using this common ground is key to improving society. Listening and working with those from the opposing party will lead to a more productive government. Lessening the perception gap is one way to reduce polarization.