Group Polarization

• 76-2 How can group interaction enable group polarization?

We live in an increasingly polarized world. The Middle East is torn by warring factions. The European Union is struggling with nationalist divisions. In 1990, a one-minute speech in the U.S. Congress would enable you to guess the speaker’s party just 55 percent of the time; by 2009, partisanship was evident 83 percent of the time (Gentzkow et al., 2016). In 2016, for the first time in survey history, most U.S. Republicans and Democrats reported having “very unfavorable” views of the other party (Doherty & Kiley, 2016). And a record 77 percent of Americans perceived their nation as divided (Jones, 2016).

A powerful principle helps us understand our increasingly polarized world: The beliefs and attitudes we bring to a group grow stronger as we discuss them with like-minded others. This process, called group polarization, can have beneficial results, as when low-prejudice students become even more accepting while discussing racial issues. And it can be socially toxic, as when high-prejudice students who discuss racial issues become more prejudiced (Myers & Bishop, 1970; Figure 76.1). The repeated finding: Like minds polarize.

group polarization

the enhancement of a group’s prevailing inclinations through discussion within the group.

Figure 76.1 Group polarization

If a group is like-minded, discussion strengthens its prevailing opinions. Talking over racial issues increased prejudice in a high-prejudice group of high school students and decreased it in a low-prejudice group.

The vertical axis of the graph shows prejudice (from low to high, running from -4 to +4 in intervals of 1). The horizontal axis shows two points in time: before discussion and after discussion. There are two lines: one showing high-prejudice groups (in orange), and one showing low-prejudice groups (in blue). While the line for the high-prejudice group has a positive slope, that for low-prejudice groups has a negative slope. Before discussion, prejudice for high-prejudice groups was approximately +2.9. After discussion, it was +3.4. On the other hand, prejudice for low-prejudice groups declined from -1.7 before discussion to -3 after discussion.

Analyses of terrorist organizations reveal that the terrorist mentality emerges slowly among people who share a grievance (McCauley, 2002; McCauley & Segal, 1987; Merari, 2002). As they interact in isolation (sometimes with other “brothers” and “sisters” in camps or in prisons), their views grow more and more extreme. Increasingly, they categorize the world as “us” against “them” (Chulov, 2014; Moghaddam, 2005). Knowing that group polarization occurs when like-minded people segregate, a 2006 U.S. National Intelligence estimate speculated that “the operational threat from self-radicalized cells will grow.”

“ What explains the rise of fascism in the 1930s? The emergence of student radicalism in the 1960s? The growth of Islamic terrorism in the 1990s? . . . The unifying theme is simple: When people find themselves in groups of like-minded types, they are especially likely to move to extremes. [This] is the phenomenon of group polarization.”

Cass Sunstein (2009)

The Internet offers us a connected global world, yet also provides an easily accessible medium for group polarization. When I [DM] got my start in social psychology with experiments on group polarization, I never imagined the potential dangers, or the creative possibilities, of polarization in virtual groups. On the plus side, I can network with other advocates of accessibility for people with hearing loss. On the minus side, the Internet enables opinion bubbles: Progressives friend progressives and share links to sites that affirm their shared views. Conservatives connect with conservatives and likewise share conservative perspectives. With news feeds and retweets, we feed one another information—and misinformation—and click on content we agree with (Bakshy et al., 2015; Barberá et al., 2015). Thus, within the Internet’s echo chamber of the like-minded, views become more extreme. Suspicion becomes conviction. Disagreements with the other tribe can escalate to demonization. (For more on the Internet’s role in group polarization—toward ends that are good as well as bad—see Thinking Critically About: The Internet as Social Amplifier.)

“ Dear Satan, thank you for having my Internet news feeds tailored especially for ME!”

Comedian Steve Martin, 2016 tweet

A text box on top reads, 76–3 What role does the Internet play in group polarization? The text above the illustration reads, The Internet connects like-minded people and strengthens their ideas. Like-minded separation plus conversation equals group polarization. Four cycle diagrams are shown. In the first cycle diagram two climate-change skeptics are shown who are connected to each other over the internet. In the second flow diagram, a grieving woman who lost her child and people who are empathetic toward her are connected with the help of internet. In the third flow diagram, Anti-government militant people are connected to each other through the internet. In the fourth flow diagram, two people with hearing impairment are connected to each other through the internet where one says to the other, Hear hear! Transform assistive listening technology. Below the flow diagrams, the text Electronic communication and social networking encourage people to isolate themselves from those with different opinions on Facebook and Twitter, we often share political content with like-minded others. People find support online for their shared ideas and suspicions in two main cases. In the first case, white supremacists become more racist. Bullies become more abusive and militia members become more violence-prone. In the second case, peacemakers grow stronger in their convictions. Cancer survivors and bereaved parents strengthen shared perspectives of resilience. Social justice promoters become more committed.