12 September 2014 - group polarization

Save democracy, shut down the internet! Congress is not broken because Americans voted wrong, it’s broken because of group polarization, a psychological phenomenon that causes group decisions to be more extreme than individual decisions. Decades of research show that group polarization increases when the group provides a wider variety of more convincing arguments, and when ingroup-outgroup membership (are you a Democrat or a Republican?) is salient. Additional effects due to cat videos cannot be ruled out. Save democracy!