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The effects of social feedback on private opinions. Empirical evidence from the laboratory

The question of how people change their opinions through social interactions has been on the agenda of social scientific research for many decades. Now that the Internet has led to an ever greater interconnectedness and new forms of exchange that seem to go hand in hand with increasing political pol...

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Autores principales: Sarközi, Marcel, Jütersonke, Stephanie, Banisch, Sven, Poppe, Stephan, Berger, Roger
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9534395/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36197874
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274903
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author Sarközi, Marcel
Jütersonke, Stephanie
Banisch, Sven
Poppe, Stephan
Berger, Roger
author_facet Sarközi, Marcel
Jütersonke, Stephanie
Banisch, Sven
Poppe, Stephan
Berger, Roger
author_sort Sarközi, Marcel
collection PubMed
description The question of how people change their opinions through social interactions has been on the agenda of social scientific research for many decades. Now that the Internet has led to an ever greater interconnectedness and new forms of exchange that seem to go hand in hand with increasing political polarization, it is once again gaining in relevance. Most recently, the field of opinion dynamics has been complemented by social feedback theory, which explains opinion polarization phenomena by means of a reinforcement learning mechanism. According to the assumptions, individuals not only evaluate the opinion alternatives available to them based on the social feedback received as a result of expressing an opinion within a certain social environment. Rather, they also internalize the expected and thus rewarded opinion to the point where it becomes their actual private opinion. In order to put the implications of social feedback theory to a test, we conducted a randomized controlled laboratory experiment. The study combined preceding and follow-up opinion measurements via online surveys with a laboratory treatment. Social feedback was found to have longer-term effects on private opinions, even when received in an anonymous and sanction free setting. Interestingly and contrary to our expectations, however, it was the mixture of supportive and rejective social feedback that resulted in the strongest influence. In addition, we observed a high degree of opinion volatility, highlighting the need for further research to help identify additional internal and external factors that might influence whether and how social feedback affects private opinions.
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spelling pubmed-95343952022-10-06 The effects of social feedback on private opinions. Empirical evidence from the laboratory Sarközi, Marcel Jütersonke, Stephanie Banisch, Sven Poppe, Stephan Berger, Roger PLoS One Research Article The question of how people change their opinions through social interactions has been on the agenda of social scientific research for many decades. Now that the Internet has led to an ever greater interconnectedness and new forms of exchange that seem to go hand in hand with increasing political polarization, it is once again gaining in relevance. Most recently, the field of opinion dynamics has been complemented by social feedback theory, which explains opinion polarization phenomena by means of a reinforcement learning mechanism. According to the assumptions, individuals not only evaluate the opinion alternatives available to them based on the social feedback received as a result of expressing an opinion within a certain social environment. Rather, they also internalize the expected and thus rewarded opinion to the point where it becomes their actual private opinion. In order to put the implications of social feedback theory to a test, we conducted a randomized controlled laboratory experiment. The study combined preceding and follow-up opinion measurements via online surveys with a laboratory treatment. Social feedback was found to have longer-term effects on private opinions, even when received in an anonymous and sanction free setting. Interestingly and contrary to our expectations, however, it was the mixture of supportive and rejective social feedback that resulted in the strongest influence. In addition, we observed a high degree of opinion volatility, highlighting the need for further research to help identify additional internal and external factors that might influence whether and how social feedback affects private opinions. Public Library of Science 2022-10-05 /pmc/articles/PMC9534395/ /pubmed/36197874 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274903 Text en © 2022 Sarközi et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Sarközi, Marcel
Jütersonke, Stephanie
Banisch, Sven
Poppe, Stephan
Berger, Roger
The effects of social feedback on private opinions. Empirical evidence from the laboratory
title The effects of social feedback on private opinions. Empirical evidence from the laboratory
title_full The effects of social feedback on private opinions. Empirical evidence from the laboratory
title_fullStr The effects of social feedback on private opinions. Empirical evidence from the laboratory
title_full_unstemmed The effects of social feedback on private opinions. Empirical evidence from the laboratory
title_short The effects of social feedback on private opinions. Empirical evidence from the laboratory
title_sort effects of social feedback on private opinions. empirical evidence from the laboratory
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9534395/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36197874
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274903
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