While there is a big divide in today’s political landscape, research suggests that the polarization that exists on social media may be even more extreme. Social media is highly influential in shaping our beliefs and the information we have about the world, as the average person around the world spends about 2.5 hours on social media every day, according to a Forbes article. It is no surprise, however, that what appears on social media might not always be true, and individuals interpret what they see differently. When free speech on social media starts to cause harm, that’s when extra attention needs to be paid to how we interpret various messages.
Brady et al. (2023) have found that people perceive political content on social media, specifically Twitter in this case, to convey more extreme moral outrage than what the authors actually intended for. For example, an author may post a political statement and report that they feel mildly outraged when writing it. However, an observer sees the post and thinks that the author must have been extremely outraged writing it. This is especially likely to happen for observers who spend a significant amount of time on social media daily, specifically to learn more about politics. Furthermore, the overperception of moral outrage accumulates and leads to overgeneralized biases and judgments about outrage from a whole demographic group. It also can lead to individuals in a network expressing more outrage than they really feel in an effort to conform to what they perceive the majority’s level of outrage is. All of this can silence moderate voices and create what the authors call “false polarization.”
When we interpret from social media content that certain political groups have more extreme attitudes than they actually do, we become even more polarized. In a world that’s already so divided, how can we address the ways social media fuels false polarization? While social media is a useful and easily accessible platform to learn about politics, the authors propose that it’s important for people to have accurate information about their own group’s emotions and under which situations we are prone to overperception. The authors also suggest that people may be receptive to education programs that inform them how social media can skew their understanding of emotions online. This can help to mitigate overperception and avoid conforming to a heightened level of polarization.
Citations:
Brady, W. J., McLoughlin, K. L., Torres, M. P., Luo, K. F., Gendron, M., & Crockett, M. J. (2023). Overperception of moral outrage in online social networks inflates beliefs about intergroup hostility. Nature Human Behaviour, 7(6). https://doi.org/10.1038/