College Students Aren’t As Liberal As You Think: Evidence for Political Moderation Within Homogeneous Groups
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- As America grows ever more polarized, a question arises: are productive discussions even possible anymore? Due to the rising phenomenon of partisan sorting, more and more Americans are living in enclaves that share not just demographic features but are politically homogeneous (Brown and Enos 2021). A set of famous findings in the literature offers little hope: the widely-accepted universal law of group polarization states that homogeneous groups always become more extreme after discussion (Sunstein 2002). Groups that enter a conversation leaning towards one perspective come out ever more ensconced in opinions more radical than previously held (Friedkin 1999). If this law really is universal, it poses a serious problem for the efficacy of political conversations in the United States. This thesis aims to disprove the universality of this law by considering a study, “Shaping Our Future” from the Stanford Center for Deliberative Democracy, undertaken with a group of highly homogeneous college students (n = 541, where 75% of the sample identified as or leaned towards the Democratic Party, compared to just 11.5% for the Republican Party). College students are a perfect population for this question as they tend to be highly liberal and are the subject of a current political battleground between the left and the right. By examining opinion change using a pre- and post-study survey method, this thesis demonstrates that this homogeneous group moderated (decrease in ideological polarization) on a majority of proposals as well as grew warmer (decrease in affective polarization) towards the other side. In particular, this group of liberal college students became more conservative on economic issues. T-tests are used to prove statistical significance. Overall, I find that this group, despite its makeup, did meaningfully reduce polarization through discussion. I therefore offer a potential counterexample to the universal law of group polarization as well as a hopeful note for future conversations in the college campus climate and around the nation.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Date modified | December 5, 2022 |
| Publication date | July 22, 2022 |
Creators/Contributors
| Author | Khan, Yasmeena Ramani |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor | Siu, Alice |
| Thesis advisor | Diamond, Larry |
Subjects
| Subject | Polarization (Social sciences) |
|---|---|
| Subject | Politics and government |
| Subject | Political parties |
| Subject | ideological polarization |
| Subject | group polarization |
| Subject | Psychology |
| Subject | symbolic systems |
| Subject | affective polarization |
| Genre | Text |
| Genre | Thesis |
Bibliographic information
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- Use and reproduction
- User agrees that, where applicable, content will not be used to identify or to otherwise infringe the privacy or confidentiality rights of individuals. Content distributed via the Stanford Digital Repository may be subject to additional license and use restrictions applied by the depositor.
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal license (CC0).
Preferred citation
- Preferred citation
- Khan, Y. (2022). College Students Aren’t As Liberal As You Think: Evidence for Political Moderation Within Homogeneous Groups. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/bk864dh3082
Collection
Undergraduate Honors Theses, Symbolic Systems Program, Stanford University
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- Contact
- yasmeenak@gmail.com
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