Boxing In
Selective exposure and echo chambers in partisan television consumption: Evidence from linked viewership, administrative, and survey data
David Broockman & Joshua Kalla
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Influential theories doubt that partisan television's audience is sufficiently large, moderate, or isolated from cross-cutting sources for it to meaningfully influence public opinion. However, limitations of survey-based television consumption measures leave these questions unresolved. We argue that nonpolitical attributes of partisan channels can attract voters to form habits for watching channels with slants they do not fully share. We report findings from three novel datasets which each link behavioral measures of television consumption to political administrative or survey data. We find that approximately 15% of Americans consume over 8 hours/month of partisan television. Additionally, weak partisans, independents, and outpartisans comprise over half of partisan channels’ audiences. Finally, partisan television consumers largely consume only one partisan channel and remain loyal to it over time, consistent with “echo chambers.” These findings support our argument and suggest partisan television's potential to influence public opinion cannot be dismissed.
Navigating Ideological Divides in Digital Spaces: How Political Ideology and Moral Rhetoric Shape the Promotion of Causes Online
Monica Gamez-Djokic et al.
Purdue University Working Paper, May 2024
Abstract:
Social media platforms such as Twitter have significantly broadened the reach of social movements, allowing people to easily advocate for their hot-button political and social causes. In the current research, we examine what impacts individual’s decisions to advocate for a cause online, focusing on the moral rhetoric used. We find in seven behavioral experiments (N = 3152) and an observational study on Twitter (34,967 users) that liberals demonstrate reduced support for preferential causes that use conservative-associated moral rhetoric (i.e. binding foundations) compared to those with liberal-associated moral rhetoric (i.e. individualizing foundations) both in hypothetical online platforms and on the social media platform Twitter (Studies 1-5). However, conservatives’ support for preferential causes remains consistent regardless of the moral rhetoric. Liberals’ sensitivity to moral rhetoric appears to be driven at least in part by their desire to limit the spread of conservative values in public (Studies 3-4). Consistent with this explanation, in private contexts, liberals show consistent support for preferential causes, irrespective of the moral rhetoric used. This research highlights the importance of influencing the broader moral discourse in liberals’ decisions to advocate for a cause.
Online Signals of Extremist Mobilization
Olivia Brown et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Psychological theories of mobilization tend to focus on explaining people’s motivations for action, rather than mobilization (“activation”) processes. To investigate the online behaviors associated with mobilization, we compared the online communications data of 26 people who subsequently mobilized to right-wing extremist action and 48 people who held similar extremist views but did not mobilize (N = 119,473 social media posts). In a three-part analysis, involving content analysis (Part 1), topic modeling (Part 2), and machine learning (Part 3), we showed that communicating ideological or hateful content was not related to mobilization, but rather mobilization was positively related to talking about violent action, operational planning, and logistics. Our findings imply that to explain mobilization to extremist action, rather than the motivations for action, theories of collective action should extend beyond how individuals express grievances and anger, to how they equip themselves with the “know-how” and capability to act.
Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Very Similar Sets of Foundations When Comparing Moral Violations
Jack Blumenau & Benjamin Lauderdale
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Applications of moral foundations theory in political science have revealed differences in the degree to which liberals and conservatives explicitly endorse five core moral foundations of care, fairness, authority, loyalty, and sanctity. We argue that differences between liberals and conservatives in their explicit ratings of abstract and generalized moral principles do not imply that citizens with different political orientations have fundamentally different moral intuitions. We introduce a new approach for measuring the importance of the five moral foundations by asking U.K. and U.S. survey respondents to compare pairs of vignettes describing violations relevant to each foundation. We analyze responses to these comparisons using a hierarchical Bradley-Terry model which allows us to evaluate the relative importance of each foundation to individuals with different political perspectives. Our results suggest that, despite prominent claims to the contrary, voters on the left and the right of politics share broadly similar moral intuitions.
Correcting Misperceptions of Fundamental Differences Between U.S. Republicans and Democrats: Some Hope-Inspiring Effects
Lukas Wolf & Paul Hanel
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Perceived polarization between U.S. Democratic and Republican voters has grown over past decades, and this polarization underpins a dwindling sense of hope about the future. Contrary to this trend, the present three experiments (one pre-registered) with 2,529 U.S. participants found substantial similarities between the groups in their fundamental values. We tested whether depicting these real value similarities in overlapping distributions can correct misperceptions of group differences and increase hope. Republicans and Democrats who saw overlapping distributions perceived the groups as more similar and expressed more hope in open-ended comments, compared with seeing commonly used barplots or receiving no information. The effect on qualitative hope was partially explained by a sense of shared reality and potential for compromise between groups. We call on the social sciences to report the amount of group overlap when communicating research findings on group comparisons to the media and public to help reduce harmful perceptions of polarization.
Personal narratives build trust across ideological divides
David Hagmann, Julia Minson & Catherine Tinsley
Journal of Applied Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Lack of trust is a key barrier to collaboration in organizations and is exacerbated in contexts when employees subscribe to different ideological beliefs. Across five preregistered experiments, we find that people judge ideological opponents as more trustworthy when opposing opinions are expressed through a self-revealing personal narrative than through either data or stories about third parties -- even when the content of the messages is carefully controlled to be consistent. Trust does not suffer when explanations grounded in self-revealing personal narratives are augmented with data, suggesting that our results are not driven by quantitative aversion. Perceptions of trustworthiness are mediated by the speaker’s apparent vulnerability and are greater when the self-revelation is of a more sensitive nature. Consequently, people are more willing to collaborate with ideological opponents who support their views by embedding data in a self-revealing personal narrative, rather than relying on data-only explanations. We discuss the implications of these results for future research on trust as well as for organizational practice.
Why Twitter Sometimes Rewards What Most People Disapprove of: The Case of Cross-Party Political Relations
Gordon Heltzel & Kristin Laurin
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent evidence has shown that social-media platforms like Twitter (now X) reward politically divisive content, even though most people disapprove of interparty conflict and negativity. We document this discrepancy and provide the first evidence explaining it, using tweets by U.S. Senators and American adults’ responses to them. Studies 1a and 1b examined 6,135 such tweets, finding that dismissing tweets received more Likes and Retweets than tweets that engaged constructively with opponents. In contrast, Studies 2a and 2b (N = 856; 1,968 observations) revealed that the broader public, if anything, prefers politicians’ engaging tweets. Studies 3 (N = 323; 4,571 observations) and 4 (N = 261; 2,610 observations) supported two distinct explanations for this disconnect. First, users who frequently react to politicians’ tweets are an influential yet unrepresentative minority, rewarding dismissing posts because, unlike most people, they prefer them. Second, the silent majority admit that they too would reward dismissing posts more, despite disapproving of them. These findings help explain why popular online content sometimes distorts true public opinion.
Political censorship feels acceptable when ideas seem harmful and false
Emily Kubin, Christian von Sikorski & Kurt Gray
Political Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
People seem willing to censor disagreeable political and moral ideas. Five studies explore why people engage in political censorship and test a potential route to decreasing censorship. While Americans report being generally supportive of free speech and against censorship (Study 1), we find that people censor material that seems harmful and false (Study 2), which are often ideas from political opponents (Study 3). Building on work demonstrating the perceived truth of harmful experiences (i.e., experiences of victimization), we test an experience-sharing intervention to reduce censorship. Among college students, the intervention indirectly decreased students' willingness to censor controversial campus speakers' ideas, through reducing beliefs that these speakers were sharing harmful and false ideas related to gun policy (Study 4). We also find benefits of sharing harmful experiences related to the abortion debate. Americans were less willing to censor and report the social media posts of opponents who base their views on experiences of victimization rather than scientific findings (Study 5).
Confronting Core Issues: A Critical Assessment of Attitude Polarization Using Tailored Experiments
Yamil Ricardo Velez & Patrick Liu
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
A long-standing debate in political psychology considers whether individuals update their beliefs and attitudes in the direction of evidence or grow more confident in their convictions when confronted with counter-attitudinal arguments. Though recent studies have shown that instances of the latter tendency, which scholars have termed attitude polarization and “belief backfire,” are rarely observed in settings involving hot-button issues or viral misinformation, we know surprisingly little about how participants respond to information targeting deeply held attitudes, a key condition for triggering attitude polarization. We develop a tailored experimental design that measures participants’ core issue positions and exposes them to personalized counter-attitudinal information using the large language model GPT-3. We find credible evidence of attitude polarization, but only when arguments are contentious and vitriolic. For lower valence counter-attitudinal arguments, attitude polarization is not detected. We conclude by discussing implications for the study of political cognition and the measurement of attitudes.
From Feeds to Inboxes: A Comparative Study of Polarization in Facebook and Email News Sharing
Hema Yoganarasimhan & Irina Iakovetskaia
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study explores the polarization of news content shared on Facebook compared with email using data from the New York Times’ Most Emailed and Most Shared lists over 2.5 years. Employing latent Dirichlet allocation and large language models (LLMs), we find that highly polarized articles are more likely to be shared on Facebook (versus email), even after accounting for factors like topics, emotion, and article age. Additionally, distinct topic preferences emerge, with social issues dominating Facebook shares and lifestyle topics prevalent in emails. Contrary to expectations, political polarization of articles shared on Facebook did not escalate post-2020 election. We introduce a novel approach to measuring polarization of text content that leverages generative artificial intelligence models, like ChatGPT, and it is both scalable and cost effective. This research contributes to the evolving intersection of LLMs, social media, and polarization studies, shedding light on descriptive patterns of content dissemination across different digital channels.