The Devil Shift: Perceptions and Misperceptions of Opponents
Paul Sabatier; Susan Hunter; Susan McLaughlin
The Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 3 (Sep., 1987), 449-476

  1. Introduction
    1. Humans are attributed with the ability to examine alternatives with unlimited computational skills, but are limited by ignorance of choices.
    2. Humans are capable to a certain degree, of estimating their opponent's goals, resources, and strategies. Allocating the optimum amount of scarce resources, between too few and too many is the ideal for a successful strategy.
    3. There is little solid evidence on the extent to which adversaries accurately perceive each other's motives, values, and resources.
      1. W.W.I. and the American Civil War are examples of such serious underestimating.
      2. The Japanese underestimated American Strength during W.W.II
      3. John Foster Dulles underestimated the political and economic strength of the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
      4. McClellan underestimated Lee's forces and refused to fight.
      5. Hitler was said to have accurately estimated forces at the beginning of W.W.II.
    4. Brady and Sniderman (1985: table 1) have shown that:
      1. Liberals perceive conservatives to be less conservative than they actually are.
      2. Conservatives perceive liberals to be more liberal than is the case.
    5. Examples of studies showing overestimating of opponents.
      1. Milbrath's (1963:139) study
        1. Washington Lobbyists perceived themselves to be more successful than their opponents. But when asked to name the most successful lobbyist they generally picked their most recent opponents.
      2. Cherington and Gillen (1962) study
        1. Lobbyists often rated themselves as weaker than their opponents.
      3. Culhane, Davis, and Davis (1981:212) study of public land management in Wyoming
        1. Economic users and environmentalists generally perceived their opponents [each other] to be stronger than did most other members of the policy community concerned with public lands management in Wyoming.
    6. The purpose is to develop a proposal that players in a conflict will perceive their opponents as "more evil" than they actually are. The proposal will be tested in the environment of the Lake Tahoe land use and water quality dispute.
  2. The Devil Shift
    1. At least in relatively high conflict situations, political elites tend to see their apponents as "devils," i.e. as being more powerful and more "evil" than they actually are.
    2. The argument is not very surprising considering the international political climate of isolationism and lack of common communication.
    3. Partisan exaggeration of opponents also occurs in Western Europe and the United States of America. Political opponents follow a "norm of restrained partisanship"
      The basic Hypotheses
      1. Actors will impugn the motives and reasonableness of their opponents while perceiving themselves to be reasonable people acting out of concern for the public welfare. 2. Actors will evaluate their opponents' behavior in harsher terms than will most members of their policy community, while evaluating their own behavior in more favorable terms.
      3. Actors will perceive their opponents to be more influential and themselves to be less influential, than will most members of their policy community. 4. The extent of distortion of influence and of belief is presumed to vary with ideological distance. In particular: The amount of distortion (or "devil shift") is correlated with the distance between one's beliefs and those of one's opponents.
    4. Misperception of Beliefs
      1. Thus: opponents who have very different beliefs - e.g. on a conservatism scale--will overemphasize their adversaries' influence and negative aspects more than elites who are closer together. All of these hypotheses require a reasonably valid standard of comparison against which one can measure the amount of distortion. In some cases, there may be relatively objective measures of beliefs (e.g. private correspondence) or influence (e.g., changes in floor votes following major lobbying campaigns).
      2. A fundamental tenet of balance/dissonance theories is that people find it very difficult to balance a positive self-image with a positive image of someone who disagrees with them.
      3. The more one persists in their "error"--the more one begins to suspect their motives or otherwise regards them as dangerous and untrustworthy. This is particularly true if they persist in disagreeing with us on issues which we regard as salient.
      4. In long conflicts, the dynamics of escalation tend to transform opponents from responsible adversaries into people with extreme and dangerous views.
    5. Misperception of Influence
      1. People tend to perceive and to recall negative aspects more than positive ones. Negative experiences stand out more than do positive ones of comparable magnitude.
      2. Individuals will most often experience frustration than success. Delays, temporary stalemates, compromises, and perhaps even defeats are more frequent than victories for most actors. Thus one is likely to be acutely aware of one's own limitations of influence, and is likely to exaggerate one's own weaknesses. Envy and Jealousy are magnified as one does not perceive the opponent's own frustrations. The success of an opponent is at one's own expense and serves to "rub it in."
      3. Interest groups tend to exaggerate the power of their opponents in order to promote internal cohesion, rally their members to political action, and aid in fund raising. But, what begins as a tactical effort to exaggerate the power of one's opponents tends to take on a life of its own, as leaders are forced to repeat and justify their claims and as members are bombarded with negative images. In short, what begins as propaganda becomes enshrined in organizational doctrine and transmitted to adherents.
      4. In cases of defeat, it is much more comfortable to one's self image to attribute defeat to the overwhelming resources of one's opponents than to admit that ones own position was not that persuasive.
  3. Conflict Over Land Use Policy At Lake Tahoe: Background and Data Base
  4. Analysis and Findings
  5. Summary and Conclusion