Die Amerikaner überschätzen ständig die gesellschaftlichen Gegenreaktionen, die eine Änderung ihrer politischen Überzeugungen mit sich bringt. Diese übertriebene Angst vor Ablehnung führt tendenziell dazu, dass Einzelpersonen ihre wechselnden Ansichten verbergen, was dem öffentlichen Diskurs unterschiedliche Perspektiven nimmt.

**People consistently overestimate the social backlash of changing their political beliefs**, new psychology research shows

A recent study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that people consistently overestimate how much their political peers will judge them for changing their minds on polarizing issues. **This inflated fear of rejection tends to make individuals hide their shifting views, which deprives the public discourse of diverse perspectives**. The research provides evidence that the social penalty for political dissent within one’s own party is generally much milder than expected.

“Two trends really stood out to me. The first is that Americans are becoming increasingly afraid to speak their minds about politics — polling shows this fear has grown substantially over the past two decades. The second is that people tend to perceive their political parties as having a uniform set of beliefs, when in reality, private polling reveals much more diversity of opinion underneath the surface,” explained Trevor Spelman, a PhD student at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

The main takeaway is that the fear of speaking up within your own political group is often worse than the reality,” Spelman said. “Across our studies, people consistently anticipated moderately harsh rejection for breaking from their party’s position on issues like abortion, gun control, and immigration. But the people actually doing the judging reported much milder reactions. We saw the same pattern emerge across survey, behavioral, and qualitative measures – predictors consistently and robustly overestimate how much other group members would socially punish them for expressing dissent.”

For those interested, here’s the link to the peer reviewed journal article:

https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fpspi0000516

This probably explains why so many people seem shocked when they find out their friends or family members actually agree with them on stuff everyone’s been quietly self censoring the whole time.