Changing polarized beliefs using social consensus and moral conviction
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In the field of attitude change and formation, polarized beliefs (e.g., beliefs that are at one extreme or another) are known to be difficult to change. This resistance to change becomes extremely problematic when the polarized belief is rooted in misinformation (e.g., polarized vaccination beliefs leading to vaccine hesitancy), and or precludes development of meaningful public policy (e.g., willful disbelief of climate change). Prior literature on attitude change indicates that one effective way to change belief in general is leveraging the effect of social consensus (people tending to agree with their peers), but previous work has failed to address how this applies to polarized belief specifically. Furthermore, many polarized beliefs are held with moral convic􀆟on, which has been associated with increased resistance to social consensus, however, this relationship has not been experimentally tested. In this thesis, I empirically test how manipulation of social consensus affects support for polarized issues. Additionally, I tested whether or not reduction of moral conviction can increase the effectiveness of a social consensus intervention. I describe a series of experiments on support for various polarized topics, and show that in some cases, social consensus can increase support. I expect this new approach to improve calibration as to which topics can be influenced by social consensus manipulations and thereby improve public policy communication.
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