Seeing Divides: Cognitive Biases and the Subjective Structure of Political Conflict

While political conflicts are well studied, less is known about how citizens perceive the divides that shape democratic societies. This article integrates cleavage theory with meta-perceptions—beliefs about the political attitudes of social groups—to examine how people cognitively map political divides. Using original survey data from Germany and focusing on immigration as a key issue in the socio-cultural cleavage, we theorize and test three cognitive biases: egocentrism, conservatism, and false polarization. Results show that citizens project their views onto others, overestimate societal negativity toward immigration, and exaggerate group polarization. These biases are unevenly distributed across cleavage groups, reflecting the structure of political conflict. Moreover, their interaction produces distinct misperception patterns: biases reinforce each other among anti-immigration individuals and offset each other among pro-immigration individuals. The findings suggest that meta-perceptions are shaped by both psychological biases and social divisions, providing new insights into the cognitive foundations of political conflict.