Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change

America is embroiled in cultural wars over abortion, immigration, gun control, climate change, religion, race, gender, and everything in between. Do people know how much attitudes have shifted on these contentious issues, or even which side is winning? Two preregistered studies suggest they do not. In Study 1, we asked a nationally representative sample of participants to estimate how 51 different attitudes had changed over time and compared their estimates to actual polling data. Participants overestimated the amount of change on 29 attitudes (57%), underestimated change on 10 attitudes (20%), estimated change in the wrong direction on 10 attitudes (20%), and estimated change correctly on only two attitudes (4%). In most cases, participants did not know whether an attitude had grown to a majority or shrunk to a minority. These misperceptions had little to do with participants’ demographics or ideologies and seemed instead to arise from a stereotype that the present is far more liberal than the past. Indeed, in Study 2, participants overestimated the liberal shift on most attitudes, believing that the liberal side had gained ground that it had in fact lost (e.g., gun control), or already held (e.g., climate change), or never held (e.g., religion). In three additional preregistered studies, we found that these misperceptions could justify policies that would otherwise seem objectionable. Overall, our findings suggest that widely shared stereotypes of the past lead people to misperceive attitude change, and these misperceptions can lend legitimacy to policies that people may not actually prefer.