According to a new survey by the Public Religion Research Institute, only 41 percent of Americans oppose allowing same-sex couples to marry. But that same 41 percent has a highly skewed perception of where the rest of the country stands: nearly two-thirds of same-sex marriage opponents erroneously think most Americans agree with them. And only two in 10 same-sex marriage opponents realize that the majority of Americans support marriage equality.
Same-sex marriage opponents are unique in the depth of their misunderstanding of the issue. Because they skew strongly conservative and deeply religious, this may be a manifestation of what Andrew Sullivan has termed "epistemic closure." Think of this as an extreme case of confirmation bias -- that tendency of people to filter out information that challenges their beliefs and preconceived notions.
Epistemic closure was most publicly and hilariously on display during Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential bid, when conservatives "unskewed" the polls to tilt the data in their favor, and the GOP establishment appeared to be blindsided by an electoral result that many independent observers saw coming months earlier.
That's the danger of living in silos of like-minded people, whether you are a progressive or conservative: you can become disconnected from reality. This research also explains the rise of the Tea Party movement: mostly angry older white people who are not tracking the changes in the society and, when some big event happens, like Barack Obama being elected, they are surprised and scared.
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