Depolarization of attitudes in groups.

In past studies of shifts in attitude following group discussion, a majority initially favors one particular side of the issue. Under such conditions, both theories based on social comparison processes and those based on persuasive argumentation make identical predictions: Discussion will lead to polarization, that is, a shift in the overall group mean toward a more extreme position. However, when the members are split into similar-size subgroups, each of which favors a different side of the issue, then the 2 kinds of theories make contrary predictions: A social comparison analysis would imply that as a result of discussion, the gap between these subgroups should increase (i.e., bidirectional polarization will occur); an analysis based on persuasive argumentation suggests that this gap should decrease (i.e., depolarization will occur). When such subgroups were in fact created in 2 experiments with 455 undergraduates, massive depolarization effects were obtained; at the same time, the typical group polarization effect was also evident. However, the magnitude of the polarization was relatively small compared to the magnitude of the depolarization effects. Furthermore, consistent with persuasive-arguments theory, the magnitude of depolarization was inversely related to the popularity of the discussion topic. (35 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)