The Effect of Group Polarization on Opposition to Donald Trump

Bekafigo, Marija Anna; Степанова, Елена В.; Eiler, Brian A.; Noguchi, Kenji; Ramsey, Kathleen L.

doi:10.1111/pops.12584

Cited by 12 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 50 publications

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“…Trump's detractors, far from reflexively rejecting any claims he makes, may instead generally ignore information from the 45th president and not allow it to affect their views one way or another. However, this does not preclude Trump affecting attitudes among his detractors in other ways [49].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Seeking Evidence of The MAGA Cult and Trump Derangement Syndrome: An Examination of (A)symmetric Political Bias

Franks

Hesami

2021

Societies

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Three studies sought to explore the existence of (a)symmetric bias regarding Donald Trump. In Study 1, participants read one of three statements expressing different degrees of favorability toward electing the President of the United States via a National Popular Vote attributed to Trump or an anonymous source. In Study 2, participants read one of two statements either favoring or disfavoring the name change of the Washington NFL franchise, and the statement was attributed to either Trump or an anonymous source. In Study 3, Trump and Biden voters were asked to rate their support or opposition to counting all the votes in battleground states when continued counting was expected to either help Trump or Biden. Results for all three studies supported the asymmetric bias hypothesis. Trump supporters consistently showed bias in favor of the interests and ostensible positions of Trump, whereas Trump’s detractors did not show an opposing bias.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

Seeking Evidence of The MAGA Cult and Trump Derangement Syndrome: An Examination of (A)symmetric Political Bias

Franks

Hesami

2021

Societies

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“…Gentzkow [58] shows a dramatic increase in the polarization debate since the midtwentieth century (Figure 6). Social media and political campaigns [59] amplify polarization not only in the context of elections, but also through an easy reach to potentially millions of people who can access real-time tweets or video interviews of any politician posting such content. Esteve et al [60] state that social platforms might cause radicalization and polarization by limiting exposure to the opinions of like-minded people.…”

Section: Polarizing Topicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Polarizing Topics on Twitter in the 2022 United States Elections

Katalinić,

Dunđer,

Seljan

2023

Information

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Politically polarizing issues are a growing concern around the world, creating divisions along ideological lines, which was also confirmed during the 2022 United States midterm elections. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between the results of the 2022 U.S. midterm elections and the topics that were covered during the campaign. A dataset consisting of 52,688 tweets in total was created by collecting tweets of senators, representatives and governors who participated in the elections one month before the start of the elections. Using unsupervised machine learning, topic modeling is built on the collected data and visualized to represent topics. Furthermore, supervised machine learning is used to classify tweets to the corresponding political party, whereas sentiment analysis is carried out in order to detect polarity and subjectivity. Tweets from participating politicians, U.S. states and involved parties were found to correlate with polarizing topics. This study hereby explored the relationship between the topics that were creating a divide between Democrats and Republicans during their campaign and the 2022 U.S. midterm election outcomes. This research found that polarizing topics permeated the Twitter (today known as X) campaign, and that all elections were classified as highly subjective. In the Senate and House elections, this classification analysis showed significant misclassification rates of 21.37% and 24.15%, respectively, indicating that Republican tweets often aligned with traditional Democratic narratives.

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“…Additionally, the group discussion tends to make members aware that one of the polar positions is seen to have greater value in the group (Levinger & Schneider, 1969) such that advocacy and adherence to that position will be treated more positively by other group members than the opposing position. As a consequence, these processes will foster a movement among group members to hold more extreme positions after group discussion than they did prior to the discussion (Bekafigo et al, 2019), again reflected in the partisan polarization observed among those who went to the Capitol building. If these and similar groups hold discussions repeatedly, these processes could cascade leading group members to hold very extreme positions while initially coming from relatively moderate positions (Sunstein, 2002).…”

Section: Group Polarizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The relevance of group dynamics for understanding the U.S. Capitol insurrection.

Hinsz¹,

Jackson²

2022

Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice

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This article applies multiple perspectives to demonstrate the relevance of group dynamics for understanding and explaining some of the events associated with the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. As the concluding article for this special issue on the group dynamics of the insurrection, the various perspectives show the strength of the field to address the complexity of the insurrection. Method: The relevance of the group dynamics literature is demonstrated through an analysis of the insurrection from multiple theoretical and conceptual perspectives including the following: group polarization, dynamic social impact theory, person-situation interaction framework, cognitive dissonance, emergent norm theory, focus theory, emotional contagion, groups in conflict, communication models, social identity, intergroup dialogue theory, aggression involving groups, models of crowd behavior, motivation to action, and motivational systems. Results: These various perspectives point to a vast array of frameworks (e.g., person-situation), group processes and group phenomena that can be applied for understanding and explaining aspects of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Conclusions: This concluding article demonstrates the relevance of group dynamics for understanding and explaining events associated with the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. The numerous perspectives derived from research on groups provide an expansive understanding of the events of the insurrection. These diverse perspectives also provide a foundation for recommendations for how to forestall similar events in the future as well as to mitigate the political polarization that contributed to those events. Highlights and Implications• Perspectives and principles from the group dynamics field are very relevant for understanding and explaining events associated with the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.• Numerous perspectives and principles from the study of groups (e.g., group polarization, shared social reality) can, in combination, contribute to a comprehension of events associated with the insurrection.• Based on the strength of multiple perspectives from group dynamics, a variety of recommendations can be generated for averting adverse aspects of events similar to the insurrection.

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The Effect of Group Polarization on Opposition to Donald Trump

Cited by 12 publications

References 50 publications

Seeking Evidence of The MAGA Cult and Trump Derangement Syndrome: An Examination of (A)symmetric Political Bias

Seeking Evidence of The MAGA Cult and Trump Derangement Syndrome: An Examination of (A)symmetric Political Bias

Polarizing Topics on Twitter in the 2022 United States Elections

The relevance of group dynamics for understanding the U.S. Capitol insurrection.

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