Abstract

Is there reason to be concerned about what has been seen as an increasing trend for discourse on complex issues to be confined to an “echo chamber” of like-minded individuals? To investigate how thinking regarding an issue changes in form following concentrated discourse with like-minded peers, we undertook a qualitative examination of changes in the reasoning that 34 older adults used to justify their positions prior to and following such discourse. They showed a divergence of patterns. A minority abandoned mention of previously expressed ideas at odds with their own positions or otherwise narrowed the reasoning used to justify their positions. Consistent with findings from previous studies, only a minority showed increased certainty and/or extremity (polarisation) on quantitative scales. Countering this minority were a larger proportion whose thinking appeared to benefit from such engagement in several respects that we describe. A follow-up study compares results for a sample of young adults.

摘要

是否有理由担心将复杂问题的讨论限制在志趣相投的人的“回声室”中的趋势正在增加？为了调查在与志同道合的同伴集中讨论之后，关于问题的思考方式如何发生变化，我们对这种变化的定性研究进行了定性检验，其中包括34位老年人在进行此类讨论之前和之后为自己的立场辩护的理由。他们表现出不同的模式。少数人放弃了先前表达的想法，与自己的立场背道而驰，或者以其他方式缩小了证明其立场合理性的理由。与以前的研究结果一致，只有少数人在定量范围上显示出增加的确定性和/或极端（极化）。反对这一少数派的比例更大，我们的描述似乎从这种参与中受益。一项后续研究比较了年轻人样本的结果。