Discussing outgroup attitudes with like-minded people makes them more extreme

Evidence

Finally, specific unfavorable impressions of an outgroup might not only be a common topic of discussion with other ingroup members; they could become even more extreme after the discussion. As succinctly summarized by Isenberg (1986), “on decisions in which group members have, on the average, a moderate proclivity in a given direction, group discussion results in a more extreme average proclivity in the same direction” (p. 1141), a process known as group polarization. Indeed, Myers and Bishop (1970) found that White participants’ attitudes towards Blacks polarized after discussion when they had talked about their attitudes with likeminded people (i.e., with people who were either low or high in prejudice). — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 2369

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Connects to moral panics and crowd/group dynamics literature in the reader’s library, and to communication-as-culture frameworks on how shared discourse amplifies beliefs.
• SEED: Article angle: group polarization as the micro-mechanism that converts individual bias into institutionalized prejudice in organizations — the ‘huddle effect’.

Related

• Discussion with likeminded peers pushes group attitudes further in their initial direction (similarity 0.94)
• Group discussion amplifies shared biased perceptions into consensual stereotypes (similarity 0.84)
• Group members enforce extreme attitudes by punishing those with balanced views (similarity 0.82)
• Deliberation among like-minded peers pushes groups to more extreme positions. (similarity 0.82)
• Ingroup members harshly punish peers who hold balanced or moderate outgroup attitudes (similarity 0.81)
• Mediated rather than face-to-face deliberation tends to polarize groups (similarity 0.79)
• Misperceived outgroup extremity drives real polarization through a self-fulfilling spiral. (similarity 0.78)