When it comes to political polarization, it's confirmation bias all the way down. While your affection for your own party has not grown in recent years, your distaste for the other party has intensified. You're also likely to be wrong about the characteristics of members of the other party, about what they actually believe, and even about their views of you. But you are trapped in a partisan prison by the psychological effects of confirmation bias. Vilification of the other party perversely leads partisans to behave in precisely the norm-violating and game-rigging ways they fear their opponents will.

Source: New York Times December 12, 2021 01:47 UTC