Over 130 studies have examined the relationship between interpersonal political discussion and political knowledge, generally finding that discussion can increase people’s level of political knowledge (Amsalem & Nir, 2019). However, two important questions remain unanswered: (a) Do some types of political discussions facilitate greater levels of political knowledge than others? (b) Do people retain knowledge gained from political discussions? In this study (N = 96), we addressed these questions using a novel methodological approach that combines a lab experiment, in which we manipulated the occurrence of political discussion, with a systematic content analysis of participants’ discussions (N = 1,080 distinct instances of discussions). We found that discussions involving confirmatory feedback and cueing were associated with greater levels of political knowledge than other types of discussions. Furthermore, knowledge gains from discussion were not retained after a short delay. Our study lays the theoretical and methodological groundwork for future investigations into the “black box” of political discussion.

中文翻译：

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人际讨论和政治知识：通过结合实验和内容分析的方法打开黑匣子

超过 130 项研究检验了人际政治讨论与政治知识之间的关系，普遍发现讨论可以提高人们的政治知识水平（Amsalem & Nir，2019）。然而，两个重要问题仍未得到解答：(a) 某些类型的政治讨论是否比其他类型的政治讨论更有助于提高政治知识水平？(b) 人们会保留从政治讨论中获得的知识吗？在这项研究 (N = 96) 中，我们使用一种新的方法论方法解决了这些问题，该方法结合了实验室实验，其中我们操纵了政治讨论的发生，对参与者的讨论进行了系统的内容分析 (N = 1,080 个不同的实例讨论）。我们发现，与其他类型的讨论相比，涉及确认性反馈和提示的讨论与更高水平的政治知识相关。此外，从讨论中获得的知识并没有在短暂的延迟后保留下来。我们的研究为未来对政治讨论“黑匣子”的调查奠定了理论和方法学基础。