In a world where people interact more and more online, we may be inclined to become more and more isolated and we can't just blame it on the tendency to create our own echo chambers. IMHO, it's a product of the dehumanization of online interaction. So, the more you see depersonalized viewpoints online, the easier it is to demonize the opposition.Dwelling in a political echo chamber — where you only encounter people who agree with you — is hardly conducive to a healthy democracy.
But it turns out that broadening your horizons by perusing opposing points of view on social media may just make the partisan divide worse.
That’s the depressing result of an unusual experiment involving 909 Democrats and 751 Republicans who spend a lot of time on Twitter.
“Attempts to introduce people to a broad range of opposing political views on a social media site such as Twitter might be not only ineffective but counterproductive,” researchers reported this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
...
They already knew people become more inclined to compromise on political issues when they spend time with people who hold opposing views. Face-to-face meetings can override negative stereotypes about our adversaries, paving the way for negotiation.
But whether these dynamics would extend to virtual interactions through social media was unknown.
....
Compared to the Democrats who did not follow the conservative bot, those who did “exhibited slightly more liberal attitudes.” The more they had paid attention to the bot’s retweets (as measured by additional surveys), the more liberal their attitudes became. However, none of these changes were large enough to be statistically significant.
It was a different story for Republicans. Compared to those who did not follow the liberal bot, those who did “exhibited substantially more conservative views” after just one month. The greater the number of liberal tweets the Republicans absorbed, the more conservative they became. These results were statistically significant.
In other words, the experiment backfired.
Basically, they paid people on twitter a small sum to follow a bot that spouted political views that were opposed to their own. They asked them the same 10 questions about their political beliefs before and after the study to see if anything shifted. Things got "worse".
Per the Los Angeles Times
In a world where people interact more and more online, we may be inclined to become more and more isolated and we can't just blame it on the tendency to create our own echo chambers. IMHO, it's a product of the dehumanization of online interaction. So, the more you see depersonalized viewpoints online, the easier it is to demonize the opposition.
I work with a lot of people that have vastly different political views than myself. I do think that it helps humanize your ideas of what people are like. If you ignore the political beliefs, they are not that much different than you. But at the same time, it is very difficult to have actual political discussions in that environment. The flip side is a place like this, which I think has way more potential than twitter (whose character limit is very counterproductive,IMO), but it doesn't seem like people take the opportunity to humanize themselves or accept the humanity of others.
Not trying to be preachy here. Can't say that when I see some avatar or sig designed to troll a person like me, that I can just ignore it and see that poster as someone with a family and friends other interests that I might share with them. Who knows, if we met in some neutral environment in person, they might actually *gasp* be polite and friendly to me instead of insulting me right off the bat.
What do you folks think? Are you getting more and more "liberal" or "conservative" by spending time on here? Is this study inherently limited by the cesspool of twitter?
That's the backfire effect. It guarantees that if you want to convince somebody that their beliefs are incorrect, giving them opposing facts isn't the way to do it. That's because we're hardwired to be tribalistic, not rational.
We're ignorant.
We're ignorant.
No, we're tribal. Ignorance is curable. The human need to belong to groups for protection is primordial.
Multiple studies indicating the same behavior offline have been done as well, unfortunately.
Emotional appeals do seem to be more persuasive, unfortunately.That's the backfire effect. It guarantees that if you want to convince somebody that their beliefs are incorrect, giving them opposing facts isn't the way to do it. That's because we're hardwired to be tribalistic, not rational. When you "prove" to somebody that their claims are wrong, what you are unintentionally doing is telling them that the tribe they belong to, which holds similar beliefs. is wrong.
If you want to convince somebody that their beliefs or claims are wrong, you have to do it in a way that breaks through the tribal barrier. That kind of psychological jujitsu is so far over my pay grade I've never even attempted it. I wouldn't even know where to start.
Attempts to introduce people to a broad range of opposing political views on a social media site such as Twitter might be not only ineffective but counterproductive.
Red (from the article):
- Political views are presumably conclusions based on sound/cogent arguments for them and that derive from a coherent set of principles.
Basically, they paid people on twitter a small sum to follow a bot that spouted political views that were opposed to their own. They asked them the same 10 questions about their political beliefs before and after the study to see if anything shifted. Things got "worse".
Per the Los Angeles Times
In a world where people interact more and more online, we may be inclined to become more and more isolated and we can't just blame it on the tendency to create our own echo chambers. IMHO, it's a product of the dehumanization of online interaction. So, the more you see depersonalized viewpoints online, the easier it is to demonize the opposition.
I work with a lot of people that have vastly different political views than myself. I do think that it helps humanize your ideas of what people are like. If you ignore the political beliefs, they are not that much different than you. But at the same time, it is very difficult to have actual political discussions in that environment. The flip side is a place like this, which I think has way more potential than twitter (whose character limit is very counterproductive,IMO), but it doesn't seem like people take the opportunity to humanize themselves or accept the humanity of others.
Not trying to be preachy here. Can't say that when I see some avatar or sig designed to troll a person like me, that I can just ignore it and see that poster as someone with a family and friends other interests that I might share with them. Who knows, if we met in some neutral environment in person, they might actually *gasp* be polite and friendly to me instead of insulting me right off the bat.
What do you folks think? Are you getting more and more "liberal" or "conservative" by spending time on here? Is this study inherently limited by the cesspool of twitter?
Basically, they paid people on twitter a small sum to follow a bot that spouted political views that were opposed to their own. They asked them the same 10 questions about their political beliefs before and after the study to see if anything shifted. Things got "worse".
Per the Los Angeles Times
In a world where people interact more and more online, we may be inclined to become more and more isolated and we can't just blame it on the tendency to create our own echo chambers. IMHO, it's a product of the dehumanization of online interaction. So, the more you see depersonalized viewpoints online, the easier it is to demonize the opposition.
I work with a lot of people that have vastly different political views than myself. I do think that it helps humanize your ideas of what people are like. If you ignore the political beliefs, they are not that much different than you. But at the same time, it is very difficult to have actual political discussions in that environment. The flip side is a place like this, which I think has way more potential than twitter (whose character limit is very counterproductive,IMO), but it doesn't seem like people take the opportunity to humanize themselves or accept the humanity of others.
Not trying to be preachy here. Can't say that when I see some avatar or sig designed to troll a person like me, that I can just ignore it and see that poster as someone with a family and friends other interests that I might share with them. Who knows, if we met in some neutral environment in person, they might actually *gasp* be polite and friendly to me instead of insulting me right off the bat.
What do you folks think? Are you getting more and more "liberal" or "conservative" by spending time on here? Is this study inherently limited by the cesspool of twitter?
Twitter attracts twidiots.
IME, liberals tend to want echo chambers in lieu of debate over opposing views.
That's a gas-lighting statement if I've ever heard one. This is not true at all. Us 'liberals' are always willing to share the knowledge we have but usually Trump supporters don't want to acknowledge truth.
The need to jump up and down together? To put all your energy into something and make it something out of nothing?
According to the Hare Krishna we're in an age of quarrel and the political discussion is a fight not a co-operation and being in meat-eating and ignorance we act this out in a base manner.
According to the Hare Krishna this age lasts another 427,000 years, but the "I AM seems to indicate the dates were lost and it's not 12:05am but morning already; 3:51am time to get up for Mangala Artik. Kalki should be here by 162,000 years.
You can imagine how the Hare Krishnas are jumping up and down with the Christians who do same thing in their political expression thinking their Lord appeared 5,000 years ago.
I have no idea what you are talking about...or why it is relevant to my comment.
Moreover they want to take a point or statistic and run with your tribal programming.
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