CONCEPT
Group Polarization
The empirically robust finding that like-minded people, after deliberating among themselves, converge on a more extreme version of the position they already held — not the group's average.
Group polarization is one of the most consistently replicated findings in social psychology. When individuals holding similar views discuss an issue among themselves, they do not converge on the mean of their pre-discussion positions. They move toward a more extreme version of the shared direction. The shift operates through two channels: informational (the arguments surfaced in a like-minded group skew toward the group's leaning) and social (participants adjust their stated positions to match or slightly exceed the emerging group norm). The result is a systematic ratchet toward extremity, producing post-deliberation positions that no individual member would have endorsed at the outset. The phenomenon appears across cultures, contexts, and subject matters, and its intensity tracks the strength of identity engagement with the topic under discussion.
In The You On AI Field Guide
Sunstein's Colorado experiments with colleagues at the University of Chicago provided the definitive demonstration. Citizens were assembled into groups sharing general political orientations and asked to discuss charged issues — climate change, affirmative action,