The Informational Basis for Mass Polarization

Abstract

If nothing else, democratic politics requires compromise. Mass polarization, where citizens disagree strongly and those disagreements magnify over time, presents obvious threats to democratic well-being. The overwhelming presumption is that if polarization is occurring, a substantial portion of it is attributable to fragmentation attendant an increasingly choice-laden media environment where individuals expose themselves only to opinion-reinforcing information. Under what conditions does mass opinion polarization occur? Through two over-time, laboratory experiments involving information choice behavior, this paper considers, first, the effects of slant in one's information environment on over-time opinion dynamics and, second, the moderating role of attitude importance on those effects. The experiments reveal that, despite similar information search behavior, those with strong attitudes are dogmatic, resisting even substantial contrary evidence; those with weak attitudes by contrast hear opposing arguments and develop moderate opinions regardless of the prevalence of those arguments in their environment. Evaluations of information, rather than information search behavior per se, explain why individuals with strong attitudes polarize and those with weak attitudes do not. Polarization therefore seems to require more than media fragmentation and, in fact, a more important factor may be the strength of citizens' prior attitudes on particular issues.If nothing else, democratic politics requires compromise. Mass polarization, where citizens disagree strongly and those disagreements magnify over time, therefore seems to present obvious threats to democratic well-being. Political science has demonstrated a modulating, though frequently uneasy, view of political polarization. This ambivalence reflects the ap- 1 party contrast without mass polarization.1 Just a decade later, McClosky, Hoffmann, and O'Hara (1960) demonstrated that the two-party system offered clear differences between parties without undesirable polarization.2 In more recent times, McClosky, Hoffmann, and O'Hara's assessment of American politics seems to resonate much more with the conclusion drawn by Fiorina and Abrams (2008) that "the American public as a whole is no more polarized today than it was a generation ago" (584) than with the contemporary observation by Hetherington (2001) that "Greater ideological polarization in Congress has clarified public perceptions of party ideology, which has produced a more partisan electorate" (629), but the polarization literature is still growing (see, for example, Levendusky 2009Levendusky , 2010Levendusky , 2011Stroud 2011;Carmines and Ensley 2004).The overwhelming presumption is that if polarization is occurring, a substantial portion of that polarization is attributable to the fragmentation attendant an increasingly choice- which is necessary to avoid faulty ecological inferences about opinion dynamics (Druckman 1 "If the two parties do not develop alternative programs that can be executed, the voter's frustrat...

Political communication in a high-choice media environment: a challenge for democracy?

“…This implies that if citizens show patterns of selective exposure, it does not necessarily polarize their attitudes. Even if news selection often is understood as an antecedent of audience polarization, there is strong evidence that attitude importance outweighs the information environment when explaining polarization (Leeper, 2014). All findings available to date suggest that, by and large, citizens with extreme views are more likely to show polarization after exposure to media messages compared to citizens with less extreme views.…”

Partisanship and Preference Formation: Competing Motivations, Elite Polarization, and Issue Importance

“…By confirming arguments that support prior issue positions and counter-arguing information that challenges positions, people filter information in a manner that reinforces existing issue attitudes (Lodge and Taber 2013). A key moderator of issue motivated reasoning and the degree to which people defend their existing attitudes is personal issue importance (Leeper 2014;Visser et al 2004). Research analyzes the effects of issue importance for information seeking (Iyengar et al 2008;Kim 2009) and reveals, ''issue importance is a primary motivation in political information consumption'' (Kim 2007, p. 187; see also Jerit 2007).…”

“…Buttressing these points, Visser et al (2004) find that issue importance motivates people to defend attitudes and neglect information that challenges prior attitudes (see also Holbrook et al 2005). People who view an issue as personally important are motivated to engage in elaborative information processing, but seek out and filter information in a manner that protects prior issue attitudes-in this way, personal issue importance increases the salience of issue motivations (Leeper 2014).…”

“…Yet the salience of motivations impacts the degree to which people support their party's position. If elites are polarized on the issue-increasing the salience of partisan motivations-people are more likely to prefer their party's position (Druckman et al 2013); and if people view the issue as personally important issue motivated reasoning may be accentuated (Leeper 2014). Uniting these expectations, party position-taking (i.e., supporting the position endorsed by one's preferred party) should be greatest when partisan and issue motivations are salient.…”

How Does Treatment Self-Selection Affect Inferences About Political Communication?

“…Yet that increase in support -and attendant positive message evaluations and interest in the issue -should apply only to those inclined to receive the message and not to those disinclined to choose the message. Further, because issue importance is one mechanism thought to affect the degree of selective exposure (with high importance linked to greater attitude-congruent message exposure; Holbrook et al 2005;Taber and Lodge 2006;Leeper 2014), higher importance should exacerbate this heterogeneity and lower importance should mitigate it (given the the greater similarity between the audiences for different messages). …”