I’m enjoying reading a variety of blogs, news stories, and information that both support and challenge my opinions. I’d like to make an argument for all bloggers and readers on exposing oneself to challenging viewpoints.
First, it must be stated that avoiding the arguments of opposing viewpoints is incredibly harmful. In a world that is becoming more and more polarized, the only reasonable solution to polarization is to force ourselves to understand the rationale behind opposing viewpoints. When we are exposed to challenging opinions, we develop greater political tolerance. When we are exposed to only opinions that reinforce our own—or only watch biased news networks like Fox—we become increasingly intolerant of political differences. Not exposing oneself to challenging opinions begins a vicious cycle: we become more and more polarized.
In communications, one of my fields of study, the theory of selective exposure explains that many people prefer to only engage in discussions and information with those arguments that support their own. For the average person, selective exposure plays a significant role. The World Wide Web may exacerbate the problem of selective exposure due to the plethora of political extreme groups and partisan news sites. Furthermore, fear exacerbates polarization. For example, in the last several political elections, the person we support will make our world “safer” and our lives will be “better” while the opponent will make our world more “dangerous” and our lives will be “worse.” Fear is used—and this idea is an emphasis in previous blogs—to replace logic. When people are afraid of the other candidate, then individuals seek more information to support their candidate and point of view and neglect to engage in critical thinking of the other candidate’s ideas and policies—resorting to fear and generalized negativity.
Even more interesting is that political studies show that conservatives and republicans engage in more selective exposure than liberals and democrats (Sears & Freedman, 1967; Mutz, 2002, 2001; Amodio, Jost, Master & Yeee, 2007; Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski & Sulloway, 2003; Tetlock, 1989; Garret, 2006, 2009—to cite a few studies).
Political study after political study reveal that republicans seek more sources that specifically favor the republican candidate while democrats engage in more discussion and have a more balanced mix of political information. Studies further show that Bush supporters in particular were very deeply involved in selective exposure and did not – as a generalization—even try to engage in the intellectual arguments of the opposing viewpoints, instead just using fear and negativity.
I’m not making these studies up. I’ll post them below, and these are graduate level academic, research studies. Additionally, even people who claim they expose themselves to other arguments do not necessarily understand them on a critical level. They know of the arguments; they have not critically engaged in the arguments.
So two things:
1) Selective exposure is dangerous. We must understand our opponent’s arguments and not simply vilify them.
2) Can someone tell me why by nature conservatives and republicans engage in selective exposure significantly more than liberals and democrats? That’s the question I want to answer. Does conservative mean holding onto traditional arguments and points of view and not recognizing the importance of other ideas? Does liberal mean searching through all ideas and all arguments—no matter how new, how old, how challenging or contradictory? If so, why would anyone label themselves as conservative?
I guess you can call me liberal, baby.
Here are a few complete citations for the info above. You can search by the authors and years I listed on Google Scholar if you want to find the articles, or ask me for specifics, I’ll give them to you.
Garrett, R. K. (2006). Seeking similarity, not avoiding difference: Reframing the selective exposure debate. Paper presented at the International Communication Association Conference, Dresden,Germany.
Mutz, D.C. (2002) ‘The consequences of cross-cutting networks for political participation’, American Journal of Political Science 46 (4): 838-55.
Mutz, D.C. and Martin, P.S. (2001) ‘Facilitating communication across lines of political difference: the role of mass media’, American Political Science Review 95 (1): 97-114.
Sears, D.O. and Freedman, J.L. (1967) ‘Selective exposure to information: a critical review’, Public Opinion Quarterly 31 (2): 194-213.
A little more conversation, please 