Is the political divide in the United States primarily an issue of different values, or of different beliefs?

Written by WikleBot. Help improve this answer by adding to the Suggested Sources section. When the Suggested Sources section is updated this article will regenerate.

Overview

Researchers disagree on whether today’s U.S. political divide is driven more by conflicting values (moral priorities, identity commitments) or by diverging beliefs (factual understandings, perceptions of reality). The weight of recent evidence suggests the split involves both, but in different ways:

1. Core moral values cluster differently on the left and right, shaping how people interpret political information.
2. Group-based identity motivates citizens to endorse or reject factual claims when those claims signal group membership.
3. Media and information environments amplify both value and belief gaps, making it hard to separate the two.

Arguments that the divide is mainly about values

• Moral-foundations research finds liberals weight Care and Fairness more, while conservatives put additional weight on Loyalty, Authority and Sanctity. These deep moral intuitions drive political preferences and filter incoming facts [2].
• Brooks argues that most political behavior grows from “subterranean” moral sentiments and cultural narratives rather than from consciously held factual beliefs [1].

Arguments that the divide is mainly about beliefs

• Studies of selective exposure show Democrats and Republicans encounter—and trust—different news sources, leading to incompatible empirical world-views (e.g., levels of election fraud, climate risk) [3].
• The “epistemic crisis” frame holds that disinformation ecosystems create factual schisms that later harden into value postures [4].

Integrative position: identity-protected cognition

Recent cognitive-science work combines the two claims. Van Bavel and colleagues propose that partisan identity triggers motivated reasoning: citizens accept facts that affirm their group’s values and dismiss ones that threaten them. Thus, factual beliefs become “identity signals,” not freestanding propositions [5].

Public-discourse implications

• Policy debates often talk past one another because each side employs different moral languages (values) and different factual baselines (beliefs).
• Efforts limited to fact-checking rarely change minds unless accompanied by messaging that affirms the audience’s underlying moral identity.
• Deliberative formats that highlight cross-cutting moral concerns (e.g., liberty arguments for criminal-justice reform) and provide shared evidentiary frames show modest success in reducing misperceptions.

Where scholars disagree

Haidt contends that enduring moral foundations are the primary source of partisan conflict; factual disagreement is a downstream effect [2]. Conversely, epistemic-crisis scholars argue that information disorder is eroding a common factual basis, driving moral polarisation later [4]. Identity-based models attempt to reconcile both positions by treating values and beliefs as mutually reinforcing [5].

Conclusion

The U.S. political divide cannot be attributed solely to either different values or different beliefs. Distinct moral values shape how citizens select and interpret information, while filtered information reinforces and sometimes radicalises those very values. Contemporary research therefore treats values and beliefs as interdependent elements of a single polarisation dynamic.

Sources

1. The Social Animal – Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheSocialAnimal(Brooksbook)
2. The Righteous Mind – Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheRighteousMind
3. Echo Chambers, Filter Bubbles and Polarisation: A Literature Review – Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2022). https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/echo-chambers-filter-bubbles-and-polarisation-literature-review
4. Epistemic Crisis – The Wikle. https://www.thewikle.com/w/Epistemic_Crisis
5. Van Bavel, J. J. et al. “The Partisan Brain: An Identity-Based Model of Political Belief.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 22(3), 2018. https://www.thewikle.com/resources/VanBavel2018-PartisanBrain.pdf

Suggested Sources

• The Social Animal – Wikipedia (Encyclopedia article on David Brooks’s 2011 book)
• The Righteous Mind – Wikipedia (Encyclopedia article on Jonathan Haidt’s 2012 book)
• Echo Chambers, Filter Bubbles and Polarisation: A Literature Review – Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2022 research review)
• Epistemic Crisis – The Wikle (Wiki article / Overview page)
• The Partisan Brain: An Identity-Based Model of Political Belief – Trends in Cognitive Sciences 22 (3), 2018 (Peer-reviewed review article)