Racial And Political Bias: The News Makes People More Divided, But You Can Fight It

To watch the news in 2015 is to be reminded, almost daily, of how divided people are in the United States. We have political infighting and fatal shootings whose motivations can’t seem to shake a deep-seated racial bias. We’re told this is normal, to be expected.

But mounting psychological research argues these stories are fraught with a dangerous selection bias, one that makes people less sympathetic to those not part of their supposed in-group. We pick sides. We draw clear lines in the sand, based on hard-formed opinions about world...