Rational social and political polarization
Authored by Daniel J Singer, Aaron Bramson, Patrick Grim, Bennett Holman, Jiin Jung, Karen Kovaka, Anika Ranginani, William J Berger
Date Published: 2019
DOI: 10.1007/s11098-018-1124-5
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Abstract
Public discussions of political and social issues are often
characterized by deep and persistent polarization. In social psychology,
it's standard to treat belief polarization as the product of epistemic
irrationality. In contrast, we argue that the persistent disagreement
that grounds political and social polarization can be produced by
epistemically rational agents, when those agents have limited cognitive
resources. Using an agent-based model of group deliberation, we show
that groups of deliberating agents using coherence-based strategies for
managing their limited resources tend to polarize into different
subgroups. We argue that using that strategy is epistemically rational
for limited agents. So even though group polarization looks like it must
be the product of human irrationality, polarization can be the result of
fully rational deliberation with natural human limitations.
Tags
polarization
Model
Memory
Decision
Biased assimilation
Attitude polarization
Epistemic rationality
Group deliberation
Social
epistemology