The Psychological Mechanisms Behind Online Polarization
Abstract
This essay aims to explore and examine the psychological mechanisms that underpin and contribute to online polarization. It focuses particularly on the cognitive biases, social identities, and emotional responses that color and shape interactions on SNS platforms. The production of this essay was prompted by the dominant discourse about how the rise of the digital enabled or even encouraged the polarization of society and vitriol in online communication. Importantly, to understand the exacerbation of societal divisions between individuals and between groups due to interactions online, it is necessary to recognize that a combination of different levels of analysis is required. On an individual level, one has to consider cognitive aspects, viewing the world through the prism of one’s biases, social aspects of perceiving one’s interlocutor as part of a different group, hence enhancing the in-group/out-group mentality, and emotional aspects, like being prone to ridicule or empathize with a conversational partner. At the same time, these micro-effects are simultaneously conditioned and heightened by the macro-level. That is, the key role of the platform is to observe how its policy, content layout, and composition of users influence the ease of producing and catalyzing these phenomena. In other words, it is a complicated network of variables that shape the digital landscape and its users. Given its complexity, any discussion of online interaction polarizing or not should resist reductionism. The essays consist of eight parts. First, the intro provides a necessary context and definitions. Section II contains a review of the relevant literature on digital polarization. To focus the analysis, its three parts are structured thematically, starting with works looking at polarization on social networking sites, followed by research on the incivility shaping online interactions, and finishing with works analyzing the groupism dividing online communities.
Keywords online polarization, cognitive biases, social identities, emotional responses, in-group/out-group mentality, digital communication, platform influence, societal division
