Increasingly, (European) politics is characterised by the strong presence of divisive discourse that pits “us” against “them”. Within this context, scholars study the lines along which citizens depict boundaries between different social groups. So far, however, most studies have focused on preferences for one of these groups experiencing the conflict. This paper takes a different perspective and focuses instead on the perceived salience of social conflict. Salience refers to the cognitive awareness of social conflict (e.g., perceived conflict between rich and poor). We argue that this relationship is asymmetric: individuals who perceive conflict to be salient, do not necessarily have to prefer one of the groups involved in the conflict, while individuals who hold strong outgroup attitudes are likely to perceive conflict as salient. Using data from the Netherlands from 2020, we show that perceptions of conflict are structured along two highly correlated dimensions: a socio-economic dimension and a cultural dimension. Moreover, we demonstrate that preference and salience of social conflict represents distinct aspects of an individual’s worldview and may have distinct electoral effects. Our findings illustrate the importance of conflict thinking in obtaining a more comprehensive understanding of social conflict.