The writer is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at University of Maryland Baltimore County. His research interests include the study of American voting behavior, public opinion, media and politics, inequality, quantitative methods, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. He teaches courses on American politics, media, and political behavior. This article was originally published by The Conversation.
As statewide primaries continue through the summer, many Americans are beginning to think about which candidates they will support in the 2022 general election.
This decision-making process is fraught with difficulties, especially for inexperienced voters.
Voters must navigate angry, emotion-laden conversations about politics when trying to sort out whom to vote for. Americans are more likely than ever to view politics in moral terms, meaning their political conversations sometimes feel like epic battles between good and evil.
But political conversations are also shaped by, obviously, what Americans know – and, less obviously, what they think they know – about politics.
In recent research, I studied how Americans’ perceptions of their own political knowledge shape their political attitudes. My results show that many Americans think they know much more about politics than they really do.
Knowledge deficit, confidence surplus
Over the past five years, I have studied the phenomenon of what I call “political overconfidence.” My work, in tandem...
The author and behavioural scientist, Gad Saad, has just published a book on what he calls “suicidal empathy”. He says that “a society dies when it cares more about exhibiting infinite tolerance a...