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<div class="timestamp">September 17, 2012</div>
<h1>Breaking Up the Echo</h1>
<h6 class="byline">By
<span><span>CASS R. SUNSTEIN</span></span></h6>
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<p>
Cambridge, Mass. </p>
<p>
IT is well known that when like-minded people get together, they tend to end up thinking a more <a title="Sunstein paper in Yale Law Journal" href="http://yalelawjournal.org/the-yale-law-journal/essay/deliberative-trouble?-why-groups-go-to-extremes/">extreme version</a>
of what they thought before they started to talk. The same kind of
echo-chamber effect can happen as people get news from various media.
Liberals viewing MSNBC or reading left-of-center blogs may well end up
embracing liberal talking points even more firmly; conservative fans of
Fox News may well react in similar fashion on the right. </p>
<p>
The result can be a situation in which beliefs do not merely harden but
migrate toward the extreme ends of the political spectrum. As current
events in the Middle East demonstrate, discussions among like-minded
people can ultimately produce violence. </p>
<p>
The remedy for easing such polarization, here and abroad, may seem
straightforward: provide balanced information to people of all sides.
Surely, we might speculate, such information will correct falsehoods and
promote mutual understanding. This, of course, has been a hope of
countless dedicated journalists and public officials. </p>
<p>
Unfortunately, evidence suggests that balanced presentations — in which
competing arguments or positions are laid out side by side — may not
help. At least when people begin with firmly held convictions, such an
approach is likely to increase polarization rather than reduce it.
</p>
<p>
Indeed, that’s what a number of academic studies done over the last
three decades have found. Such studies typically proceed in three
stages. First, the experimenters assemble a group of people who have
clear views on some controversial issue (such as <a title="Links to a biased assimilation study" href="http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1981-05421-001">capital punishment</a>
or sexual orientation). Second, the study subjects are provided with
plausible arguments on both sides of the issue. And finally, the
researchers test how attitudes have shifted as a result of exposure to
balanced presentations. </p>
<p>
You might expect that people’s views would soften and that divisions
between groups would get smaller. That is not what usually happens. On
the contrary, people’s original beliefs tend to harden and the original
divisions typically get bigger. Balanced presentations can fuel
unbalanced views. </p>
<p>
What explains this? The answer is called “biased assimilation,” which
means that people assimilate new information in a selective fashion.
When people get information that supports what they initially thought,
they give it considerable weight. When they get information that
undermines their initial beliefs, they tend to dismiss it. </p>
<p>
In this light, it is understandable that when people begin with opposing
initial beliefs on, say, the death penalty, balanced information can
heighten their initial disagreement. Those who tend to favor capital
punishment credit the information that supports their original view and
dismiss the opposing information. The same happens on the other side. As
a result, divisions widen. </p>
<p>
This natural human tendency explains why it’s so hard to dislodge false
rumors and factual errors. Corrections can even be self-defeating,
leading people to stronger commitment to their erroneous beliefs.
</p>
<p>
A few years ago, for example, both liberals and conservatives were
provided with correct and apparently credible information showing that
the George W. Bush administration was wrong to think that <a title="Links to study by Nyhan and Reifler from 2010" href="http://intraspec.ca/Nyhan-Reifler2010.pdf">Iraq</a>
had an active unconventional weapons program. After receiving the
correct information, conservatives became even more likely to believe
that Iraq had such weapons and was seeking to develop more. </p>
<p>
The news here is not encouraging. In the face of entrenched social
divisions, there’s a risk that presentations that carefully explore both
sides will be counterproductive. And when a group, responding to false
information, becomes more strident, efforts to correct the record may
make things worse. </p>
<p>
Can anything be done? There is no simple term for the answer, so let’s make one up: surprising validators. </p>
<p>
People tend to dismiss information that would falsify their convictions.
But they may reconsider if the information comes from a source they
cannot dismiss. People are most likely to find a source credible if they
closely identify with it or begin in essential agreement with it. In
such cases, their reaction is not, “how predictable and uninformative
that someone like that would think something so evil and foolish,” but
instead, “if someone like that disagrees with me, maybe I had better
rethink.” </p>
<p>
Our initial convictions are more apt to be shaken if it’s not easy to
dismiss the source as biased, confused, self-interested or simply
mistaken. This is one reason that seemingly irrelevant characteristics,
like appearance, or taste in food and drink, can have a big impact on
credibility. Such characteristics can suggest that the validators are in
fact surprising — that they are “like” the people to whom they are
speaking. </p>
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It follows that turncoats, real or apparent, can be immensely
persuasive. If civil rights leaders oppose affirmative action, or if
well-known climate change skeptics say that they were wrong, people are
more likely to change their views. </p>
<p>
Here, then, is a lesson for all those who provide information. What
matters most may be not what is said, but who, exactly, is saying it.
</p>
<div class="authorIdentification">
<p> <a href="http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/index.html?id=552">Cass R. Sunstein</a>,
a law professor at Harvard and the author of “Going to Extremes: How
Like Minds Unite and Divide,” was until last month the administrator of
the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. </p> </div>
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