The article is based on the book «Social Psychology» by David Myers.
Many conflicts deepen when people on both sides of the barricade discuss the problem only with their like-minded people — this process is called group polarization.
Imagine that you need to give advice in the following situations:
- “Helen is a very talented, by all accounts, writer. Until now, she has lived comfortably, earning money with cheap westerns. Not so long ago, she came up with the idea to sit down for a serious romance. If written and accepted, it could become a major event in literary life and have a significant impact on Helen’s career. But on the other hand, if she fails to realize her idea or if the novel fails, it turns out that she wasted a lot of time and effort. What decision should she make?
- “Roger, a young married man with two children, has a secure but low-paying job. Roger has enough money for everything he needs, but he can’t afford anything more than that. He learns that the share price of a not-so-famous company may soon jump 3 times if its new product is well received by consumers, but it may also drop significantly if this does not happen. Roger has no savings and will have to sell his health insurance policy to buy shares. Which decision will be more correct for Roger?
If you think like most people, you will advise Helen to take risks and Roger to be prudent. So, it turns out that in the course of the discussion, the members of the group — the further, the more — tend to polar points of view: group polarization occurs. What is it due to?
Information influence
During the discussion, there may be persuasive arguments that individual members of the group have not previously taken into account. For example, when discussing the writer Helen’s dilemma, someone might say, “Helen should take on a novel because she has nothing to lose. If the novel fails, she can always go back to writing primitive westerns.»
However, in order to change one’s own attitude, it is not enough for a discussion participant to simply hear someone else’s arguments. Not passive listening, but active participation in the discussion leads to a more noticeable change in attitude. Discussion participants and observers hear the same ideas, but when participants express them in their own words, verbal «public recognition» enhances their impact (see ↑). The more often members of the group repeat each other’s thoughts, the more actively they «rehearse» them and «legitimize».
The mere fixation of our own ideas on paper in preparation for a discussion is enough for some polarization of attitudes to occur. position.
Regulatory Impact
The second explanation of polarization is based on the comparison of oneself with other people. As Leon Festinger, author of the highly influential theory of social comparison, argues, it is human nature to want to evaluate one’s own judgments, abilities, and skills against those of other people. The members of our «reference group» — the group with which we identify ourselves — convince us better than others. Moreover, wanting to be liked, we can speak out more categorically when we find that others share our point of view.
When we ask people to predict how others will react to dilemmas like «Helen’s dilemma,» we usually end up with multiple opinions: our interlocutors don’t know who else supports the socially preferred recommendation (in this case, writing a novel). As a general rule, an individual will advise writing a novel even if the chances of success are no more than 4 to 10, but will say that most others will demand a higher degree of probability — 5 or 6 to 10. When the discussion begins, most of its participants find that, contrary to own expectations, do not «outshine» others. On the contrary, some of these others are even ahead of them and insist more strongly on writing a novel. Having discovered this, people who have freed themselves from the group norms that held them back, which they misinterpreted, express their preferences more decisively.