Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America.
School of Communication, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2022 Jun 8;17(6):e0268601. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0268601. eCollection 2022.
Past research finds that a majority of gun and non-gun owners support key gun safety policies, yet gun owners tend to underestimate other gun owners' support for these policies. We predicted that these misperceptions of support might lead gun owners to view non-gun owners as being less similar to themselves, which might undermine intergroup cooperation to promote gun safety policies and fuel intergroup animosity. Importantly, we also predicted that correcting these misperceptions would be an effective way to reduce intergroup division and enhance intergroup cooperation. We tested these predictions across two studies in which participants were randomly assigned to read information designed to correct misperceptions of gun owner support or to read other, control information. Across both studies, we find that correcting gun owners' misperceptions of gun owner support for gun safety policies leads to greater perceptions of identity overlap between gun and non-gun owners, greater willingness to work with each other to promote gun safety policies, and less negative affect towards each other. This suggests that correcting gun owner misperceptions of gun owners' support for gun safety policies might be an effective intervention to facilitate intergroup cooperation to promote these policies. Therefore, efforts to promote gun safety policies might benefit from educating gun owners about the degree of support for these policies that already exists among gun owners. Doing so might present a simple and cost-effective way to mobilize gun owners in support of these policies.
过去的研究发现，大多数枪支拥有者和非枪支拥有者都支持关键的枪支安全政策，但枪支拥有者往往低估了其他枪支拥有者对这些政策的支持。我们预测，这些对支持的误解可能导致枪支拥有者认为非枪支拥有者与自己的相似度更低，这可能会破坏促进枪支安全政策的群体间合作，并加剧群体间的敌意。重要的是，我们还预测，纠正这些误解将是减少群体间分歧和增强群体间合作的有效途径。我们在两项研究中检验了这些预测，在这些研究中，参与者被随机分配阅读旨在纠正对枪支拥有者支持枪支安全政策的误解的信息或阅读其他控制信息。在这两项研究中，我们发现，纠正枪支拥有者对枪支安全政策的枪支拥有者支持的误解会导致枪支拥有者和非枪支拥有者之间的身份重叠感更大，更愿意彼此合作以促进枪支安全政策，彼此之间的负面情绪也更少。这表明，纠正枪支拥有者对枪支安全政策的枪支拥有者支持的误解可能是促进群体间合作以促进这些政策的有效干预措施。因此，促进枪支安全政策的努力可能会受益于教育枪支拥有者了解枪支拥有者对这些政策的支持程度。这样做可能是动员枪支拥有者支持这些政策的一种简单且具有成本效益的方式。
