To Fight Polarization, Ask, “How Does That Policy Work?” - Behavioral Scientist
"We often overestimate our understanding of how political policies work…The more omniscient we think we are, the easier it is to ignore alternative facts or ideas. This phenomenon has a name—the illusion of explanatory depth (IOED)."
"Unless explicitly tested, individuals can remain largely unaware of the shallowness of their own understanding of the things they think they understand—such as the mechanics of a bicycle, or how the policy they support or despise will actually work."
"Researchers have started to explore what happens to political attitudes when you explicitly test people on how much they actually know about a policy."
"We encourage people to explain the mechanics or details of the policies and positions they claim to support, and how those details lead to a specific outcome."
"When people discover that they don’t know as much as they thought they did, something interesting happens: their political attitudes become less extreme."