To become an extremist, hang around with people you agree with

Barry

Another graduate of the school of the bleedin' obvious.

Mr Green

Excellent article.
In some ways common sense, but in other ways very insightful.

David Short

The sort of rubbish we have come to expect from The Spectator.

No doubt it will have lots of stuff about Michael Jackson in the rest of the issue.

Alex Kiss

And the most obvious examples of such group polarisation are newspapers and magazines, such as The Spectator, which have a distinct political bias.

People come looking to feed their own prejudices. The more they eat at the trough of bias, the more they find to like.

I used to disdain the Daily Mail for wasting its writers obvious talent on pedling right wing drivel. But as the true horror of my culpabilitiy in letting Labour come to power in 97 has dawned on me, I have been reading the Mail more and more. I now hate labour with extermist zeal, and the Daily Mail has become my prop, my voice, and my comfort blanket.

It's enough to make you weep.

N

I agree. Thanks for stating the obvious: "much of the time groups of people end up thinking and doing things that group members would never think or do on their own." I believe that is referred to as "mob rule" or i suppose "mob law" fits equally well.

I'm not sure what to think, this article was only a clip from the book so i'm debating comments. Given his closeness to Obama i can't help but wonder if this "new theory" is going to be another BS attempt to bash republicans and conservatives like the Homeland security memo that stated that the greatest threat to U.S. security is right-wingers. Is this going to be another "Paul Krugman" "FoxNews and republican media promotes right-wing extremism" sack of crap?

Dwight Vandryver

If I am a believer in manmade global warming, I read Monbiot's articles in The Guardian. If I am a denier, I read Booker's articles in The Telegraph. Doubtless, both columnists make a good living out of reinforcing the preconceived ideas of their respective readerships.
But Cass Sunstein has failed to explore the side effects of what he calls group polarisation. Does it follow that manmade climate change believers are mostly left of centre, while deniers are mostly right of centre? There seems to be a superficial case for supporting this hypothesis, judging by the blogging on the websites.
This means that the individual has to be very careful about choosing unrelated bandwagons merely by political association.

DJT

Hurrah - no more committees (they must be bad for our collective health!!)

michael

The extremes of do and die fundamentalism has increasingly become the power play for a group of like minded zealots: The HSE.

cath

Any anthropologists out there? I would think this phenomenon is an extension of basic primate co-operation. Members of a pack can only urge each other on, to a kill for example, if others are suggestible. Potential for group influence is inborn. It's double-edged - members may be urged on to catch the prey in a group effort good for all but if judgement is poor they may race so hard they go over a cliff edge.

Cassandra Troy

Surprise, surprise, Mr Nudge spills the beans on the NLP campaign in which the masses were manipulated to an extent, not seen for decades. The cyclic 'logic' goes as follows: put a number of subjectivists in a collective, and hey presto, what we've got is subjective collective opinion. Based on the principle of course that objective truth does not exist or is out of reach of man's limited brain power, and that free will is a myth. Very 'interesting' all.

Jon Livesey

Well, this is very obvious, as Barry says, but maybe not to Americans, who tend as a nation to live inside a large echo chamber, with political opinions that range all the way from A to B. So it's probably a jolly good thing for an Obama advisor to figure tricky stuff like this out.

But there is a perfectly easy way to inoculate yourself against second-hand extremism, and that is systematically to expose yourself to opposing views.

I do this by reading the Grauniad as well as the Telegraph, and as a bonus I get to marvel at the determined irrationality of the contributing readers of both papers.

Nick

This is the guy who thought that animals should be able to sue humans, right?

Good to see that his doctor has moderated his medication.

"Strong emotions are OK so long as your views agree with mine". Hmm.

Nalim Sharpe

Sure, only goverment has the right to polarize people, all and only for common good!!!

Ken

What happens, I wonder, when a group of sceptical, moderate, epistemologically sophisticated people get together? Uncertainty to the point of paralysis, I suppose.

J. Cuttance

I was going to say how this article is more of the sort of tripe I have come to expect from The Spectator...
but then I realised I would only be saying that because everybody else was

Egypt Steve

fine in theory, but pernicious in many ways: by arbitrarily lumping certain phenomena as "extreme" and writing them off as the products of deranged mobs, you avoid engaging them on the merits. I notice "conspiracy theories regarding Israel" written off as 'extreme" behavior. I suspect Cass hangs around with a lot of Zionist apologists!

jbk

This is not a "new theory" by any means. Social psychologists have studied group polarization for many decades now.

Not Even Likely

Yes, it is obvious and understood in academic circles. But ordinary people do not always consider it or think about it. When in like-minded groups, opposing views are not presented. Then, expressed views get stronger and stronger and convince those who did not feel strongly before. It has to be said, otherwise people won't think of it. They will just think that the opinion and information stream they are exposed to is the truth.

robert a

I suppose this principle applies to those groups of financial felons that get together and give the rest of us a royal screwing.

Dog

Amusing given that Spectator readers are a perfect example of a small group of like-minded types hanging out with the same foaming columnists, whipping each other into more and more righteous indignation...

landonlaro

kyoto potential without roughly southern extinction approximately statement

SFC MAC

"To become an extremist, hang around with people you agree with"
Which explains why Obama ended up being a Marxist.