Exagerated Differences

From Zanecorpwiki

Assuming that each "side" selects those proponents who are most confident in their views, and these are the spokespeople put forward (or alternatively, though not exclusively, the media selects said proponents to put forward) then the level of confident disagreement portrayed and received will be greatly exaggerated.

A good example of this is opinion polls. When asked to take a position, people do. However, the same people will blithely take another position a short time later. According to Robin Hanson, "it almost looks like they're giving random answers." The reason? They may have an opinion, but it's not very deeply held. Some people have a deeply held opinion, but most are really closer to "I don't know." But there's no cost to giving an answer on a poll, so people will tend to give a firm answer rather "don't know"--even if they're actually much closer to "don't know"--because it's in our nature to do so.

Paraphrase of Robin Hanson.