Liberals, Conservatives Exaggerate Their Differences, Scientists Say
 

"With media figureheads like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Moore representing the right and left, it's no wonder conservatives and liberals seem worlds apart. But the two sides of the political spectrum are closer together than they believe, a new study reveals.

Everyone, including political moderates, overestimates the gap between liberal and conservative morals, according to the new study published today (Dec. 12) in the journal PLOS ONE.

Surprisingly, it's not just the other party that people get wrong; they also tend to exaggerate the moral beliefs of their own political affiliation…"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/1…hp_ref=science

I know that some of you guys don't consider HP as a worthy source but this article seems like a ballanced one and contains many links to other relevant publications.

No surprise. I think it's the same everywhere. But as I see it both US conservatives and liberals would fit very well within the conservative parties of Europe (just an observation, no enlightened ivory towers involved), so I think the real differences are smaller over there.

pibbur who politically stands far to the left (European standard)

6 days

Jonathan Haidt, which is one of the authors of the mentioned article, were one of the reasons I begun studying psychology in the first place. That said, the perceived polarization isn't a new notion… There have been quite a few articles that stressed the growing problem of polarization in the US and the reasons for this trend. I used several of those articles as foundation for my own research on group polarization, prejudice and discrimination.

One reason is that news often use maps like this, that creates an illusion of two competing groups, without middleground and without minorities. The "accentuation effect" is when the presence of a category increases perceived differences. Political dichotomies can thus create rifts where no great difference exist in the first place (such as the workers vs. business owners dichotomy in Marxism or the men vs. women dichotomy).

Oversimplification is sometimes necessary to bring forth social change, but it may also lead to more issues and stronger opposition than what existed in the first place.



Some have argued that one solution is to stress the use of "purple" maps instead;



Compare with Sweden which is a lot harder to divide due to the many different parties in the government. We have a lot of within-blue competion and within-red competition, because we have several parties within each color.

Unfortunately, it's not average liberal and conservative viewpoints that matter. It's the liberal and conservative viewpoints that are willing to go vote in the primaries that matter. Thank you ridiculous gerrymandering.

This. There's only about 40 house seats that are considered competitive; the vast majority of representatives in either party are in districts where they may have to worry more about primary challenges than general elections. Unfortunately this also means that as long as they appease their more right or left leaning constituents they don't really have to get anything done to secure their reelection. For many of them then, this represents some relatively strong job security as it stands currently. That means that there is almost no chance for reform of redistricting standards between censuses and the overwhelming advantage given to any party that finds itself in power at the state level come census time means it is also unlikely that we will see reform there either.

exam this Judge's words,
 

"two wings of the same beast…"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FLrK9NmfM4

most likely this is what cause his show being pulled off the air.

Excellent stuff mudsling! But, as I have said before, it's a pity that, while 70% of Ron Paul's policies are a breath of freash air, 30% of them are right down crazy.

Fairly similar to Jürgen Habermas concept of The Public Sphere;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BC…_public_sphere