Democracy is already in something of a parlous state around the world, but research from the University of Illinois Chicago suggests that the biases we hold may be making things worse. The study finds that both Democrats and Republicans tend to value core democratic principles themselves, but significantly underestimate the support for those principles among opposing party members.

This, in turn, results in the willingness of people to subvert those democratic principles themselves, with Republicans seemingly especially vulnerable to this problem. The researchers explain that it’s not enough for us to have strong democratic principles ourselves, it’s important that we also believe others share them, especially our ideological opponents.

“To the degree that people come to believe that their opponents don’t care about democracy, the prospect of political loss becomes untenable, and anti-democratic behaviors may come to be perceived as justified, even necessary,” the researchers explain. “We think that there may be a, perhaps preventable, downward spiral of democratic practice rooted in psychological biases.”

Democratic values

The researchers conducted a couple of surveys where Democrats and Republicans were asked to rate the importance of various democratic characteristics. The results show that both Democrats and Republicans highly value these principles, with scores of around 90 out of 100 common (where 100 is extremely important).

They then followed this up by asking each person to estimate how much others in their own party rated the same characteristics, and also how their opponents did. Participants consistently thought that those from their own party rated the principles much more highly than their opponents.

The researchers believe that these inaccurate misperceptions spring from social psychological biases whereby politics has descended into a clear “us” vs. “them” dynamic that drives reciprocal dislike that is compounded by the polarized media landscape. While they don’t have any particular insights into interventions to rectify matters, they urge efforts to do so as maintaining democratic norms is crucial to a healthy democracy.

“The maintenance of strong democratic norms ensures that parties have a fair chance to compete for power and that minority rights are protected,” the authors conclude. “As we continue to learn more about anti-democratic behavior by elected officials and approach a consequential midterm election where principles of democracy appear to be on the ballot, studies of this kind can help inform the public-at-large and hopefully ease democratic erosion in the United States.”