How (many) descriptive claims about political polarization exacerbate polarization

Recently, researchers and reporters have made a wide range of claims about the distribution, nature, and societal impact of political polarization. Here I offer reasons to believe that even when they are correct and prima facie merely descriptive, many of these claims have the highly negative side effect of increasing political polarization. This is because of the interplay of two factors that have so far been neglected in the work on political polarization, namely that (1) people tend to conform to descriptive norms (i.e., norms capturing [perceptions of] what others commonly do, think, or feel), and that (2) claims about political polarization often convey such norms. Many of these claims thus incline people to behave, cognize, and be affectively disposed in ways that contribute to social division. But there is a silver lining. People’s tendency to conform to descriptive norms also provides the basis for developing new, experimentally testable strategies for counteracting political polarization. I outline three. peerReviewed publishedVersion

近来，研究者与记者就政治极化（political polarization）的分布特征、本质属性与社会影响提出了诸多论断。本文笔者将论证：即便这些论断准确无误且乍看之下仅为描述性表述，其中多数仍会产生加剧政治极化的严重负面影响。究其根源，乃是政治极化研究领域迄今尚未得到重视的两大交互因素所致：其一，人们倾向于遵从描述性规范（descriptive norms，即旨在捕捉[人们所感知到的]他人普遍行为、思考方式与情绪倾向的规范）；其二，有关政治极化的论断往往会传递此类规范。因此，诸多此类论断会引导人们以加剧社会分裂的方式行事、构建认知并形成情绪倾向。不过亦存在积极转机：人们遵从描述性规范的倾向，也为研发可通过实验验证的政治极化应对策略提供了理论基础。本文笔者将详述三类此类策略。经同行评审的正式发表版本