The Wisdom of Political Crowds: Increasing Accuracy and Reducing Polarization in Echo Chambers

• In Event: 2454 - Political Polarization

Abstract

Social influence has been found to improve belief accuracy on non-controversial factual matters, but groups are expected to become more extreme—and less accurate—when those beliefs are motivated by political bias. Of particular concern are “echo chambers,” which are expected to amplify partisan bias by increasing in-group similarity and between-group differences. We report the results of an experiment showing that social influence can increase the accuracy of politically motivated beliefs even in echo chambers. We further found that Democrats and Republicans became more similar, despite the absence of between-group information exchange. However, this reduced polarization was limited to factual matters. In a second experiment studying attitude questions, echo chambers generated increased polarization.

Author

• Ethan Porter, George Washington University