It’s estimated that more than 500 nonprofits aim to heal a fractured America, many of them troubled by the blood sport that seems to accompany most political disagreements.
Todd Rose has a message for these groups and their philanthropic backers: America’s divides are not as bad as you think. You may be wasting your money. And your solutions may only make things worse.
Philanthropy is, ironically, funding this message. Rose, a high-school dropout turned Harvard-trained neuroscientist, is co-founder of Populace, a nonpartisan think tank that enjoys cross-ideological backing from the likes of liberal tech mogul Mark Zuckerberg and conservative industrial magnate Charles Koch.
Since Donald Trump’s election in 2016, Populace has analyzed Americans’ values, aspirations, and political views. Its surveys on a range of topics — K-12 and higher education, the modern work force, the American dream — have found that we share more in common than you might expect. More important, Americans mistakenly believe their views are the minority, that the country as a whole embraces values and priorities far different from their own.
The result? What Rose describes as a “collective illusion,” a faulty sense that the country is more divided than it is, that everyone on the other side of the political fence holds really extreme views.
Rose is not the only researcher pointing to consensus hiding in plain sight. After the 2020 election, pollster George Barna of the Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University described a “supermajority” — two-thirds of both the Republican and Democratic parties — that supports policies that aim to increase the manufacturing work force, rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, and make Social Security and Medicare financially solvent, among other things.
More in Common, an international group studying division, found that Americans consistently see their political opposites as more extreme than they really are. “We misunderstand each other,” says co-founder Tim Dixon. “Even those who hold quite clear views are not as extreme as what the other side thinks.”
This matters to philanthropy’s work, Rose says. If Americans are deeply divided on an issue — say, immigration — advocates have no choice but to pursue the yearslong, grinding work of persuasion. “It’s one mind at a time,” Rose says.
But if disagreements are an illusion, advocates are better served by a “reveal” strategy that highlights shared experiences and desires. Marriage-equality advocates pursued this approach in the 1990s through “love is love” campaigns featuring stories of gay and lesbian individuals whose families embraced their identity. Some of the best messengers, they found, were parents who decided that their gay or lesbian child deserved the same love and commitment they enjoyed.
“You got the fastest change in public opinion in recorded history,” Rose says. The share of Americans who supported gay marriage was 57 percent in 2015, when the Supreme Court required states to recognize same-sex unions. Just a decade earlier, the number was reversed, with about 60 percent of the public standing in opposition.
Rose warns that if nonprofits deploy a persuasion strategy as they go about bridge building, the work can backfire and reinforce the idea that America is hopelessly divided. Philanthropy’s mantra ought to be “First do no harm,” he says. “You’re going to spend lots of money thinking you’re bridging divides that actually didn’t exist. And your money and your time will make things worse.”
What Matters to Us — and the U.S.
Populace conducts surveys that are far different from what Gallup and other polling firms produce. It aims to divine “private opinion” — what Americans will say absent pressure to conform to perceived societal norms or to what they believe the pollster wants to hear. Rose and colleagues deploy choice-based-conjoint (CBC) instruments, which require respondents to consider tradeoffs in their answers.
For example: A CBC survey to identity priorities for voters doesn’t ask respondents to name or rank issues in the abstract. Rather, it presents sets of policy statements (e.g., “People have their basic needs met"; “Neighborhoods and communities are safe”) and asks survey takers to choose the one that most aligns with their priorities. This exercise is repeated multiple times with different combinations of policy statements. Ultimately, the researchers see patterns in the respondents’ choices that reveal their policy priorities.
CBC surveys are popular in marketing and consumer-product design but are not common in the social sciences, in part because they are expensive, Rose says.
Here are five charts that speak to what we have in common — and what we don’t. Data is drawn from three Populace reports: an analysis of Americans’ aspirations for their country; a study of privately held opinions on major issues; and an examination of how we define success and the American dream.
Americans are deeply divided on some matters.
Immigration is the most polarizing of these. Of 55 policy issues, immigration regulation emerged as the third-highest priority among voters who backed Trump in 2020. Among Biden supporters, it was 46th. (This data is from a 2021 survey; Rose and others note mounting concern about immigration across the political spectrum.)
Race and gender are also flashpoints. In the private-opinions survey, more than two-thirds of Democrats said racism is systemic compared with 17 percent of Republicans. And 84 percent of Democrats said the government should protect transgender Americans against discrimination, more than three times the share of Republicans.
The ferocity over these disagreements has persuaded Americans that the country is more divided than it is.
Populace found that 82 percent of the public believes the country is “more divided than united,” with half suggesting that Americans are “extremely divided.”
Americans, however, are “spectacularly wrong” in their assessment of what their neighbors think, Rose says. Their perspective is warped by the intensity of the partisan battles over issues like immigration — intensity stoked by the mainstream press, social media, and outrage-for-profit entrepreneurs.
“Your brain assumes the loudest voices repeated the most are the majority,” he says.
Americans hold many of the same values and aspirations for their lives and the country.
Populace has found a stark difference between what most Americans want from life and what they think others want.
Survey takers defined the American dream for themselves in personal terms: They said they want a fulfilling job, purpose in life, and strong relationships. Asked what defines success, the No. 1 answer was that a person’s work has a positive impact on people.
Despite these personal views, respondents said that society as a whole is obsessed with money, fame, and status. Indeed, they said their fellow Americans rank wealth as the top marker of success.
Americans also agree about many fundamental principles for the country.
“Across race, gender, income, education, generational cohorts, and 2020 presidential vote, there is stunning agreement on the long-term national values and priorities that Americans believe should characterize the country moving forward,” Populace found.
Top among the values most closely held: that the country should protect individual rights like free speech, peaceful assembly, freedom of religion, and the right to bear arms.
That consensus on priorities leads to more unity than you’d expect.
Asked to rank their long-term goals and priorities for the country, red and blue voters came into remarkable alignment. Biden and Trump voters each ranked the following five among their top 15: access to high-quality health care; safety in communities and neighborhoods; criminal-justice reforms; help for the middle class; and modernized infrastructure.
