The experience and emergence of attitudinal consensus in conversations

Reaching consensus is important for human individual, social, and societal functioning, and the reverse process of polarization has been associated with individual uncertainty, social conflict and societal distrust, tension, or even schisms. In conversations, the experience of consensus is shaped by both content and aspects in the form of conversation that indicate whether people are on the same wavelength. In two conversation studies (N = 268), we aimed to 1) examine where the conversational experience of consensus originates from, and 2) test which conversational behaviours enhance attitude convergence between conversation partners. Results show that while actual attitudinal differences were only predictive in Study 2, both conversational content (e.g., disagreement) and form (e.g., experience of flow) consistently predicted the experience of consensus. Convergence of attitudes was harder to predict: most conversational factors were unrelated to attitudinal convergence, and conversational flow either increased or decreased attitudinal convergence depending on the particular context.