Civic Solitude

Misinformed and polarized beliefs often persist despite repeated fact-checking efforts. Why? New research finds that updating our trust in sources is resistant to fact-checking and is undermined by partisan source cues and politically-incongruent fact-checks These findings suggest that features of political information environments may enhance misinformation susceptibility and belief polarization through distinct effects on belief updating and trust in news sources osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/qe…

Partisans are highly segregated by workplace—the effect is similar in size to gender segregation at work. -Museums and environmental organizations have the fewest Republicans, gas pipelines and mines have the most Republicans. -Historians are most likely to be Democrats, drill operators are the most likely to be Republicans. -Political Segregation is largest among the politically active and those with more market power (senior executives). -Republicans experience higher exposure to Democrats at work: the average Republican’s coworkers are 50% Democratic versus 32% Republican for the average Democrat. Read about our this paper and 10 favorite studies of the month on our newsletter: powerofusnewsletter.com/p/au…

We need to understand political polarization through a global lens, according to an excellent new paper. Evidence from 53 countries suggests that high levels of affective polarization are correlated with democratic backsliding, but high levels of ideological polarization are not. This suggests that a narrow focus on ideological polarization (or assuming ideological and affective polarization are the same) is not useful once you leave the US political context. This is just one example where theories of polarization built on American data do not hold once you look in other countries. nature.com/articles/s41467-0…,

Social media discourse is driven by false #polarization Analyzing 1.7 million social media posts, a series of controlled experiments, and a large global survey covering 40 countries (total N = 49,222), we find that (1) strong ideologues post their opinions significantly more often than moderate individuals (2) extreme attitudes are posted more often than moderate attitudes. (3) This general pattern replicates robustly across 40 countries (4) the opinions that users post are more hostile and toxic than the beliefs they keep to themselves. Across studies we find extreme opinions are overrepresented on social media by at least 6% and up to 22% compared to their true prevalence in our samples. osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/7z… This project was led by @small_schulz and @ClaireRobertson and includes @H_Sjastad @AshuAshok @LisaFOswaldo @junghwanyang @simonsaysnothin and @andyguess

Partisans are highly segregated by workplace--the effect is similar in size to gender segregation at work. Museums and environmental organizations have the fewest Republicans, gas pipelines and mines have the most Republicans. Historians are most likely to be Democrats, drill operators are the most likely to be Republicans. Political Segregation is largest among the politically active and those with more market power (senior executives). Republicans experience higher exposure to Democrats at work: the average Republican’s coworkers are 50% Democratic versus 32% Republican for the average Democrat. nature.com/articles/s41562-0…

Health outcomes in the USA are increasingly politically polarized. Declining trust in medical professionals among right-leaning individuals, including lower willingness to seek care, follow clinical advice or believe in medication effectiveness (even for issues unrelated to COVID-19) is leaving conservatives vulnerable to preventable health risks. nature.com/articles/s41562-0…

Professors do not influence their students' politics. New data from 33 major universities finds that students become more liberal during colleagues regardless of the ideology of their professors--they find no effect of faculty partisanship on student partisanship. Instead, liberal students opt into majors with more liberal topics (and conservative students students opt into majors with more conservative topics). If, anything the study finds a small backlash effect to Democratic faculty (with a slightly higher chance of the student becoming a Republican). It also finds that Democratic profs don’t include more liberal topics or textbooks in their courses. This research debunks a lot of rhetoric about how faculty impact their students, and instead reveals the power of situation selection--students opt into majors that align with their beliefs. micah-baum.github.io/files/b…