A multidisciplinary understanding of polarization.

Abstract

This article aims to describe the last 10 years of the collaborative scientific endeavors on polarization in particular and collective problem-solving in general by our multidisciplinary research team. We describe the team's disciplinary composition-social psychology, political science, social philosophy/epistemology, and complex systems science-highlighting the shared and unique skill sets of our group members and how each discipline contributes to studying polarization and collective problem-solving. With an eye to the literature on team dynamics, we describe team logistics and processes that we believe make our multidisciplinary team persistent and productive. We emphasize challenges and difficulties caused by disciplinary differences in terms of terminology, units/levels of analysis, methodology, and theoretical assumptions. We then explain how work disambiguating the concepts of polarization and developing an integrative theoretical and methodological framework with complex systems perspectives has helped us overcome these challenges. We summarize the major findings that our research has produced over the past decade, and describe our current research and future directions. Last, we discuss lessons we have learned, including difficulties in a "three models" project and how we addressed them, with suggestions for effective multidisciplinary team research.

Polarization in attitudes towards refugees and migrants in the Netherlands

“…Although a popular topic of discussion, polarization is often not well defined, and when it is defined, these definitions differ according to discipline (e.g., Jung et al, 2019). In the current research, we focus on attitudinal polarization in society and define polarization as the existence of separated groups in society, which are divided and disagree in terms of their attitudes towards refugees and migrants (for a similar approach, see Bauer, 2019;DiMaggio et al, 1996;Maher et al, 2020;McCoy et al, 2018).…”

“…The diversity of responses towards refugees and migrants suggests that the public debate may be polarized. Polarization can briefly be described as the presence of separated groups in society with opposing attitudes (DiMaggio et al, 1996;Jung et al, 2019). Polarization may have both positive and negative outcomes on societies; it can encourage social change by stimulating discussion, political engagement, and protest (Abramowitz & Saunders, 2008;McGarty et al, 2009), but it can also undermine social cohesion by increasing the avoidance of conflicting opinions and information, the stigmatization of (minority) groups, and segregation in society (Frimer et al, 2017;McCoy et al, 2018;Moulaert et al, 2003), which may further increase attitudinal polarization.…”

The polarized mind in context: Interdisciplinary approaches to the psychology of political polarization.

“…Instead, it is more likely that polarization arises from the complex interplay of cognition and context (Hatemi & McDermott, 2016; Jung et al, 2019; Zaller, 1992), which together influence specific psychological processes in the cognitive hierarchy. Adopting a framework that interrogates these interactive effects of context and cognition, combined with methods that can measure specific processing steps as they unfold in real time, can reveal new insight into the psychological mechanisms of political polarization.…”

A Framework on Polarization, Cognitive Inflexibility, and Rigid Cognitive Specialization

“…Because of this, evolution in the biological sense may not be a perfect analogue for evolution of cognitive traits, behavior, or even culture. When addressing a large-scale evolutionary psychology question of polarization, there is a need to test the hypotheses mentioned above with multiple methods and data sources, such as lab experiments, cross-sectional surveys, demographic data, and archaeological records ( Buss, 2019 ; Jung et al, 2019 ). Polarization poses enormous challenges to addressing global issues such as climate change, the pandemic, and wars.…”

“…Polarization is defined as the process in which two entities (individuals or groups of people) move toward opposite extremes of a continuum of viewpoints or opinions. Polarization has become alarmingly pervasive in today’s society, most notably in sociopolitical discourse ( Jung et al, 2019 ). For example, liberals and conservatives are generally moving farther away from each other on a variety of issues (e.g., climate change, COVID-19, and immigration), and interactions between the two sides are marked by ideological conflict, mutual hostility, and lack of agreement ( Ennser, 2012 ; Harel et al, 2020 ).…”