Consensus is manufactured through the process of debate itself.

Evidence

When a society debates corporal punishment — when it becomes a topic of newspaper coverage, legislative hearings, professional statements, and parenting conversations — the effect is not uniform across the population. Researchers studying attitude change in the wake of the Swedish, German, and New Zealand prohibition processes have documented what might be called a “permission cascade”: the public debate creates social permission for individuals to hold, and then express, doubts about the practice that they may have already been experiencing privately. The debate does not create the doubt — in many cases, the doubt was already there, suppressed by the absence of a context in which it could be named. The debate creates the social context in which the doubt becomes expressible. And once expressible, it becomes available for examination. — , The Rod and the Child, 8651 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Public debate grants permission to voice doubts that already existed privately. — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 8651; Media balance reproduces the shared presuppositions that bracket political disagreement; Broadcasting’s need for credibility traps it between consensus and its critics (+4 more)

Related

• Public debate grants permission to voice doubts that already existed privately. (similarity 0.89)

Broader Connections

• Public debate grants permission to voice doubts that already existed privately. #expands (0.60) — , The Rod and the Child, 8651
• Media balance reproduces the shared presuppositions that bracket political disagreement #qualifies (0.50)
• Broadcasting’s need for credibility traps it between consensus and its critics #complicates (0.50)