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Field
Paper Abstract
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Before
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After
In a time when politics seem to be polarized as ever, it isn’t surprising that language use may be polarized too. If people define words in different ways, then using those words to describe their political positions can result in being perceived as more (less) extreme than they actually are. I conducted a survey with 782 MTurk workers in the U.S., eliciting their definition of the term "Democratic Socialism". This included asking them to predict how others would define the word, as well as a treatment group that received financial incentives based on predictive accuracy. I find that there is a large discrepancy between those on the Left and Right when defining the word. Financial incentives increase predictive accuracy more for those on the Right more than those on the Left or Moderates. More importantly, people from both groups made errors when predicting how others would define the word, but the nature of these errors was asymmetric across parties. In particular, those on the Right tended to make similar predictions for others on the Left versus Right, whereas those on the Left believed others on the Left were more likely to agree with them. False Consensus Effect was approximately 3 times more prevalent than Pluralistic Ignorance, especially amongst others who shared your political views.
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