Computer mediated communication has marked differences from the face-to-face context. One major difference is that, in the online context, we often have explicit access to others' opinions and these opinions are often the only informational cues available. We investigate if awareness of opinion congruence, in the absence of any other reference categories, may be sufficient to foster social identification. In a pre-registered experiment (N = 681), we manipulated exposure to opinions, and measured levels of ingroup identification, opinion-based identification and their social influence on activism intentions. Our results demonstrate exposure to others' opinions in an otherwise anonymous context fosters ingroup and opinion-based identification. There was no effect on opinion-based group activism intentions. We conclude that computer mediated contexts have consequences for identification – opinion (in)congruence is becoming more relevant as a source of social categorization. While we did not find this identification had a social influence on activism, we discuss avenues for future research to disentangle the features of opinion-based groups necessary to foster activism.

以计算机为媒介的沟通与面对面的环境有显着差异。一个主要的区别是，在网络环境中，我们通常可以明确获得他人的意见，而这些意见往往是唯一可用的信息线索。我们调查在没有任何其他参考类别的情况下，对意见一致性的认识是否足以促进社会认同。在预先注册的实验中（N = 681），我们操纵了对意见的曝光，并测量了内群体认同、基于意见的认同及其对激进主义意图的社会影响的水平。我们的结果表明，在其他匿名环境中接触他人的意见会促进内群体和基于意见的认同。对基于意见的团体行动意图没有影响。我们得出结论，计算机介导的上下文对识别有影响——意见（不一致）一致性作为社会分类的来源变得越来越相关。虽然我们没有发现这种认同对激进主义有社会影响，但我们讨论了未来研究的途径，以解开促进激进主义所必需的基于意见的群体的特征。