Enclave extremism

Cass Sunstein examines the phenomenon of enclave extremism--the tendency of people to harden their political positions when they interact mainly with others of like mind. (Thanks to A&L.)

[O]n many issues, most of us are really not sure what we think. Our lack of certainty inclines us toward the middle. Outside of enclaves, moderation is the usual path. Now imagine that people find themselves in enclaves in which they exclusively hear from others who think as they do. As a result, their confidence typically grows, and they become more extreme in their beliefs. Corroboration, in short, reduces tentativeness, and an increase in confidence produces extremism. Enclave extremism is particularly likely to occur on the Internet because people can so easily find niches of like-minded types — and discover that their own tentative view is shared by others.

It would be foolish to say, from the mere fact of extreme movements, that people have moved in the wrong direction. After all, the more extreme tendency might be better rather than worse. Increased extremism, fed by discussions among like-minded people, has helped fuel many movements of great value — including, for example, the civil-rights movement, the antislavery movement, the antigenocide movement, the attack on communism in Eastern Europe, and the movement for gender equality. A special advantage of Internet enclaves is that they promote the development of positions that would otherwise be invisible, silenced, or squelched in general debate. Even if enclave extremism is at work — perhaps because enclave extremism is at work — discussions among like-minded people can provide a wide range of social benefits, not least because they greatly enrich the social "argument pool." The Internet can be extremely valuable here.

But there is also a serious danger, which is that people will move to positions that lack merit but are predictable consequences of the particular circumstances of their self-sorting. And it is impossible to say whether those who sort themselves into enclaves of like-minded people will move in a direction that is desirable for society at large, or even for the members of each enclave. It is easy to think of examples to the contrary — the rise of Nazism, terrorism, and cults of various sorts. There is a general risk that those who flock together, on the Internet or elsewhere, will end up both confident and wrong, simply because they have not been sufficiently exposed to counterarguments. They may even think of their fellow citizens as opponents or adversaries in some kind of "war."

Gosh. Could that really happen?

Comments

This would seem to explain why conservative districts in America are concentrated in rural areas and suburbs. Such people are less likely than city dwellers to run into people who're different from them and have different views.

Is white flight a kind of self-sorting that has directly contributed to today's political climate in the U.S.?

Posted by Ken Broomfield | December 15, 2007 10:51 AM

This would seem to explain why there are clusters of people who appear to have contracted total amnesia about anything concerning Iraq before about 2002, and believe without a shred of evidence that we are fighting in an illegal, unilateral war of aggression based on the lies of a clique of deviants in the White House. Bizarre, but true.

Posted by Robert Powell | December 15, 2007 11:29 AM

This would seem to explain why conservative districts in America are concentrated in rural areas and suburbs. Such people are less likely than city dwellers to run into people who're different from them and have different views.

Oh please. Say you're an investment banker in Manhattan. If you were to meaningfully interact with a random cross-section of all people physically located in Manhattan, you'd meet a very different group of people. But this is not what actually happens. The people you meet, and who are at the parties you go to and restaurants you eat at--other investment bankers, financial services professionals, high-level corporate executives, corporate lawyers at large, prestigious law firms--are all pretty darn similar to you. You're virtually certain to have come from a family in the top decile of income and to have attended one of a small handful of prestigious colleges, same with them.

And you, like them, probably have political opinions that reflect your wealth level, education level, profession ,and location. You're very likely to be culturally liberal but somewhere between moderately economically liberal and fairly (but not extremely) economically conservative, same with them. The people who live in your building (and thus have a similar income level) are the same way. Your spouse/partner, if you have one, is also very likely to come from a similar class and social background, and have similar opinions. And a similar story is true of the bulk of the other people in the city.

Sure, the taxi driver, the homeless person on the street asking you for "spare" change, and the person sitting next to you on the subway are pretty darn different from you in terms of background, but how often are you going to talk to them? Not very.

Posted by Anonymous | December 16, 2007 1:31 PM

I wonder why Sunstein doesn't mention another institution where like-minded people tend to gather and reinforce each other's opinions: university faculties. Particularly departments like "women's studies" and "peace studies," where politics are so intertwined with the alleged discipline.

Posted by Cheerful Iconoclast | December 16, 2007 2:09 PM

Yeah, how many academic radicals are there, a couple of thousand at most? That's a hell of a voting base. Whereas the evangelicals, with their like-mindedness, have the power to change electoral outcomes.

Posted by Dick Butkiss | December 16, 2007 7:33 PM

Oh please. Say you're an investment banker in Manhattan.

If you've visited Manhattan, you may have noticed that the ratio of investment bankers to ordinary folks is roughly 5 to 1 million. Ordinary city dwellers are forced to trip over the homeless, encounter many different people, languages and customs, and in general bump up more directly against the complexity and harshness of life. It may cross a Manhattanite's mind that letting the poor eat cake might sour his daily commute.

It's the ruralites and suburbanites who live a life more like an investment banker's: traveling exclusively in cars and living among people on the same economic level, in racially homogeneous neighborhoods, and speaking the same language (both literally and colloquially). One assumes that one reason for the backlash against immigrants (illegal or not) is that now they're appearing in suburbia and small towns.

I say this as a small-town dweller who escaped L.A. and was surprised at the narrow-mindedness and subtle but pervasive racism here, especially among other ex-Los Angelinos.

Posted by Ken Broomfield | December 17, 2007 11:06 AM

I'd say anonymous is exactly right about Manhattan, and Ken Broomfield is way wrong. In fact, there are tens of thousands of us upper-middle-class people living on Fifth, Park, and Central Park West. We are a majority of the residents of those avenues. And you never need to have any social contact outside those fifty thousand people. We don't interact with the Korean grocers any more than the average suburban family interacts with their Mexican lawn crew.

Posted by y81 | December 23, 2007 12:15 PM

Small towns create a bunching in the middle. Professionals, business owners, skilled workers, and so on are all more or less the same class in a small town. The very top (the movie mogul with a ranch) and the very bottom (migrant workers) are a different class, but the people in the middle are a heterogeneous lot that crosses lines you don't often cross in a city.

To create an exclusive enclave of people who all went to Princeton (or came from Vietnam for that matter), you need a pretty big town. Same to create a social order where a lawyer and the owner of a roofing business never end up at the same meeting.

Posted by M.C. | January 3, 2008 2:26 PM