Does Disagreement Mitigate Polarization? How Selective Exposure and Disagreement Affect Political Polarization

Abstract

This study examines how selective exposure and interpersonal political disagreement influence political polarization. Using data sets from two countries, the United States and South Korea, this study investigates the association between individuals’ selective exposure and attitude polarization and proposes that disagreement in political discussion networks can be a potential moderating variable attenuating the association between selective exposure and polarization. Results across the two nations confirm that individuals’ selective likeminded media use is associated with greater polarized attitudes. Findings further show that encountering dissimilar opinions through interpersonal discussion networks generally weakens the association between selective exposure and political polarization, despite some evidence indicating that disagreement leads to more polarized attitudes rather than attenuating polarization. The implications of the findings are discussed.

Keywords

selective exposure polarization political discussion disagreement

A close relation between people’s likeminded media use and political polarization has been demonstrated in the literature—that is, people’s consumption of media outlets that share their own political dispositions may lead them to develop more polarized attitudes toward certain issues and political figures (Slater, 2007; Stroud, 2010). Less is known, however, about what factors might attenuate this political polarization process. Although a body of research on selective exposure has focused on media outlets or media content (Johnson, Bichard, & Zhang, 2009; Stroud, 2007, 2010), a separate stream of investigation has focused on interpersonal communication factors that influence political attitudes and behaviors (Huckfeldt, Mendez, & Osborn, 2004; Scheufele, Nisbet, Brossard, & Nisbet, 2004).

Among various attributes of interpersonal political discussion (e.g., network size, discussion frequency, and network heterogeneity), disagreement in political discussion networks is thought to reduce attitudinal polarization. This is because conversations with disagreeing others facilitate individuals’ careful consideration by showing them challenging points of view and thus fostering understanding of various viewpoints and deliberation activities, which in turn lead to the formation of better reasoned opinions (Gutmann & Thompson, 1996; Price, Cappella, & Nir, 2002). Theories on democratic systems point out that disagreement is an essential component of sound democracy because it is assumed that exposure to various points of view forces individuals to learn about and to consider more carefully different perspectives, thereby enhancing political understanding and confidence (Gutmann & Thompson, 1996; McPhee, Smith, & Ferguson, 1963).

Given the importance of exposure to conflicting political viewpoints, disagreement in political discussion has been widely assessed to demonstrate its influence on democratic outcomes such as political knowledge, opinion quality, political tolerance, and political engagement (Feldman & Price, 2008; F. L. F. Lee, 2012; Mutz, 2002b; Price et al., 2002). However, the current literature in this area lacks empirical evidence of the moderating role of disagreement, especially in the context of selective exposure and political polarization, and this subject has not been explicitly examined.

This study, therefore, aims to fill gaps in the literature by examining the association between selective exposure and polarization, as well as how and whether disagreement in interpersonal discussion networks interacts with selective likeminded media use in affecting political polarization. In sum, this study seeks to better understand what could attenuate political polarization resulting from selective media use by introducing political disagreement as a potential moderator. Given that exposure to disagreement has been found to develop political tolerance and a better understanding of diverse political perspectives (Mutz, 2002b; Price et al., 2002), the effects of selective likeminded media use on political polarization are likely to be diminished in the presence of disagreement within political conversations. In particular, this study provides cross-national validations of these relationships through its analysis of data from both the United States and South Korea to broaden our understanding of the relationships among selective exposure, disagreement, and political polarization.

Literature Review

Selective Exposure and Polarization

Selective exposure is the process by which people prefer to encounter information that is supportive of their existing beliefs (Stroud, 2007, 2010).¹ People feel discomfort when they encounter information that opposes their beliefs (Festinger, 1957). To reduce dissonance, they tend to selectively expose themselves to consonant information and avoid information that challenges their beliefs (Klapper, 1960). Researchers, however, found little support for the idea that selective exposure reduces cognitive dissonance, so the topic was ignored for many years (Johnson et al., 2009; Sears & Freedman, 1967; Zaller, 1992).

The theory of cognitive dissonance is not the only explanation for selective exposure. Other scholars have argued that rather than being motivated to avoid dissonance, people prefer likeminded information as a strategy to process information with less cognitive effort (Smith, Fabrigar, & Norris, 2008). Especially in a high-choice media environment that provides users with diversified media choices and increased control over information selection (Prior, 2007), people are likely to select likeminded media as a more effective way to process information. Because individuals’ resources for information processing are limited (Lang, 2000) and information that is consonant with preexisting beliefs requires less cognitive resources than counter-attitudinal information, people prefer to select attitude-consistent information to reduce mental effort (Edwards & Smith, 1996). In addition, because likeminded information is considered more credible and convincing compared with dissonant information, people prefer likeminded news and information (Lord, Ross, & Lepper, 1979; Stroud, 2011).

Research has consistently shown that people exercise selective exposure based on their partisanship (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, & Gaudet, 1944; Stroud, 2010). For example, Iyengar and Hahn (2009) demonstrated evidence of individuals’ ideological selectivity in news media use. They found that Republicans preferred to watch the Fox News Channel, which is perceived as right-leaning, and to avoid news from CNN and NPR, which are perceived as more left-leaning. Meanwhile, Democrats and liberals were more likely to pay attention to CNN and NPR while avoiding Fox News. These findings suggest that people tend to expose themselves to information that is consistent with their existing beliefs, particularly based on their partisanship or ideology.

Although selective exposure may be helpful in promoting citizens’ participation in political activities (Mutz, 2002a), researchers argue that selective exposure to similar points of view and avoidance of challenging information will likely hurt democracy. Citizens need to have a range of common experiences to develop a broader understanding of others, and sharing common experiences with different others may lead to social consensus. By contrast, if people are not exposed to others’ opinions, they are less likely to be aware of others’ legitimate rationales and even their own rationales (Mutz, 2002b). In addition, if people expose themselves only to similar points of view and ignore contrasting perspectives, they are less likely to be tolerant of challenging viewpoints (Mutz, 2002b). Thus, people’s tendency to seek information that shares their political beliefs while facilitating enclave communication and filtering information or bypassing challenging viewpoints leads to the fragmentation of public opinion and the polarization of politics, much to the detriment of democracy (Sunstein, 2007).

Although the American political landscape is constantly changing and features a diverse range of political philosophies (e.g., for various groups of political typology, see Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 2014a), research found that more people today hold consistently liberal or conservative values across a range of issues, and polarization is a salient feature of politics today (Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 2014a, 2014b). Political polarization can be intensified by exposure to information that matches one’s beliefs and avoids dissimilar perspectives. For example, likeminded groups tend to develop polarized attitudes through being exposed to persuasive arguments that are in favor of their own group (Isenberg, 1986). In a similar fashion, consuming likeminded media may also contribute to forming polarized attitudes by providing people with information that supports their own political beliefs and perspectives (Stroud, 2010).

Recognizing these associations between selective exposure and political polarization, the literature on political polarization has focused on individuals’ partisan media use and its consequences for political polarization (Stroud, 2007, 2010). Research on groups provides explanations for polarization. For example, when they are in likeminded groups, people are likely to form more extreme and polarized attitudes because they are often influenced by the most extreme members of the group, and there are social pressures to adopt the perceived group views (Doise, 1969; Isenberg, 1986). In addition, if individuals are exposed to arguments that are in favor of their preexisting perspectives, such arguments may be considered persuasive because they can be easily linked to positions already in their memories when processing and recalling information (Isenberg, 1986). By this process, exposure to consonant information provides individuals with persuasive information supporting their existing beliefs and views, thereby leading them to form more polarized attitudes. Based on these explanations, Stroud (2010) examined the association between selective partisan media use (including newspaper, radio, cable news, and websites) and political polarization. She found that the more people consumed congenial media outlets, the more they held polarized attitudes toward political candidates (i.e., Bush and Kerry) during the 2004 presidential election, supporting the notion that partisan selective exposure is related to higher levels of polarization. Using a panel analysis and a time series analysis, Stroud (2010) found more support for the idea that selective exposure leads to attitudinal polarization rather than that attitudinal polarization causes people to seek similar-minded media.

Following previous research demonstrating that selective exposure contributes to attitudinal polarization (e.g., Stroud, 2010), this study expects a positive relationship between selective likeminded media use and attitudinal polarization. Although the moderating effects of disagreement are the primary focus of the present study, the relationship between selective exposure and attitudinal polarization is also of interest as a baseline hypothesis before testing the moderating role of disagreement in the relationship between selective exposure and polarization:

H1: Selective exposure will be positively associated with polarized political attitudes.

Disagreement in Political Polarization

Given the findings on selective exposure and political polarization, the question of what factors enhance or mitigate this polarization process becomes important. Although extant literature has documented that partisan or congenial media use may facilitate political polarization, far less is known about what might mitigate the process of political polarization. Nevertheless, starting with very early studies of communication, a body of literature has focused on the role of interpersonal communication and political discussion in influencing individuals’ political attitudes and behaviors (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955; Lazarsfeld et al., 1944).

Political conversation among citizens is known to have significant influence on individuals’ political attitudes and behaviors including political knowledge and participation (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955; Lazarsfeld et al., 1944; McLeod, Scheufele, & Moy, 1999). Despite ongoing debate over which of the two types of communication—that is, media use or interpersonal political discussion—is more influential, communication scholars have agreed that people’s political attitudes, opinions, and behaviors are the outcome of a dynamic process of media use and political conversation. Moreover, those two components are complementary and equally important for understanding the role of news media use and political talk in the democratic process (Chaffee, 1972).

In the context of polarization, it is worth taking into account the role of political discussion because talking about politics influences people’s political attitudes and behaviors by forcing them to exchange and elaborate political information, thereby learning about various perspectives during such conversations (Huckfeldt & Sprague, 1995). Political talks with others provide information sources in addition to news media content and increase individuals’ cognitive elaboration on political information (Eveland, 2004; Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955). Research on interpersonal discussion networks has examined various attributes of discussion such as discussion network size, discussion frequency, network heterogeneity, and network expertise (e.g., McClurg, 2006; Mutz, 2002a; Scheufele et al., 2004).

Among the various attributes of political discussion, democratic theories point out that disagreement is an essential component of sound democracy because exposure to various points of view forces individuals to learn about different perspectives and to consider challenging opinions more carefully, thereby enhancing their own understanding of contrasting viewpoints (Gutmann & Thompson, 1996; McPhee et al., 1963). Scholars have been interested in the extent to which citizens encounter disagreement in their everyday lives. Some argue that people are likely to shelter themselves from those who disagree with them such that they join organizations and have friends who agree with them; as a result, only certain situations such as the workplace really expose people to disagreement (e.g., Mutz, 2006; Scheufele et al., 2004). However, others argue for some levels of disagreement among citizens, especially for those who are politically active and have larger networks (e.g., Huckfeldt, Johnson, & Sprague, 2004; Klofstad, Sokhey, & McClurg, 2013). Although the question of how much disagreement exists among citizens is contested (see Klofstad et al., 2013), communication scholars have paid much attention to whether and how disagreement influences citizens’ political attitudes and behaviors (Feldman & Price, 2008; Ikeda & Huckfeldt, 2001; Lee, 2012; McClurg, 2006; Nir, 2005; Valenzuela, Kim, & Gil de Zúñiga, 2012).

To date, however, the potential role of disagreement in the relationship between selective exposure and the process of political polarization has not been explicitly examined, although Huckfeldt et al. (2004) examined how the extent to which people have dissimilar discussants in their discussion networks influences polarization. They found that attitude polarization increased when four discussants out of four were supporting the same candidate, while polarization decreased when people have networks in which two discussants supported one candidate and the other two discussants supported the opposite candidate. Although their study shed important light on the role of disagreement in political polarization, they did not take into consideration how disagreement relates to selective exposure to partisan media in influencing the process of attitude polarization.

Rationales that link disagreement to political polarization have been set forth by other studies. For example, Mutz (2002b) found that exposure to dissimilar views contributes to an increase in individuals’ awareness of legitimate rationales for oppositional viewpoints and levels of political tolerance. Wojcieszak and Price (2009) examined the role of disagreement in political discussion and found that it weakens the association between the individual’s opinion and belief about others’ opinion. In their study, those who strongly favor gun regulation and whose discussion networks are high in disagreement perceive less public support for gun-regulation policy than those whose discussion networks are likeminded. These findings are relevant to examining the effects of encountering disagreement in political discussion networks on the polarization process.

How and whether disagreement in political discussion networks moderates the association between partisan selective exposure and political polarization remain open questions. Indeed, Stroud (2010) notes that “there certainly are other variables that influence polarization and that may counteract some of the effects of partisan selective exposure,” and thus, “research into other variables that work in concert with partisan selective exposure to influence polarization is warranted” (p. 570). Accordingly, the primary purpose of this study is to investigate the role of interpersonal political disagreement in influencing the polarization process, specifically whether disagreement interacts with partisan media use in influencing attitude polarization.

Previous studies provide a rationale to examine the possible moderating role of interpersonal political disagreement in political polarization. Discussing with dissimilar others motivates people to scrutinize the other side’s perspectives more carefully and help make sense of both their own and dissimilar opinions (Mutz, 2006; Price et al., 2002). Scheufele (2002) examined the moderating role of interpersonal discussion in the relationship between mass media use and political knowledge and found that the positive effects of news media are stronger for people who talk about politics more often. This is because, given that interpersonal discussion could help compensate for the shortcomings of media coverage, people can make better sense of news information when they talk about politics with others (Eveland, 2004; Eveland, Morey, & Hutchens, 2011; Scheufele, 2002). These studies suggest that the shortcomings of likeminded media use (e.g., lack of the other side’s perspectives) can be compensated for by talking to people who have dissimilar viewpoints. Because having more political discussions with dissimilar others may help individuals to acquire additional information and diverse perspectives (Scheufele, 2002), it may also provoke individuals to scrutinize more closely incomplete or slanted information that they receive from likeminded media. These explanations imply a potential moderating role of disagreement in the relationship between selective exposure and political polarization. Specifically, the impact of likeminded media consumption on individuals’ attitudinal polarization should be greater if they are less likely to engage in political discussion with disagreeing others and could be diminished if they have more discussion with those who disagree. Based on this reasoning, the following hypothesis is proposed:

H2: Disagreement will moderate the association between selective exposure and attitudinal polarization. That is, the relationship between selective exposure and polarization will be weakened by disagreement in interpersonal discussion networks.

Overview of Studies

Very few studies have examined the relationship between selective exposure and political polarization outside of the United States, particularly replicating results across countries (except Garrett et al., 2014), limiting generalization of the results to other political settings. Even fewer have investigated whether and how disagreement plays a role in the context of selective media use and polarization across countries. To extend the current literature in this area, this study presents data from two surveys that provide evidence for the role of interpersonal disagreement in the relationship between selective exposure and political polarization—one from the United States and the other from South Korea. In the U.S. case (Study 1), selective exposure was operationalized as the respondents’ perception approach (i.e., one’s perception of the slant of one’s used media outlet), and a cross-sectional survey of the United States was analyzed, which limits the ability to confirm the causal relationships. South Korea’s case (Study 2) was designed to replicate the results of Study 1 and address some limitations of Study 1 (e.g., causal relationship). Study 2 replicated the findings of Study 1 with a direct and actual measure of selective media use in a different political setting, South Korea, where political polarization has been a prominent social issue. Furthermore, Study 2 used panel data to ensure the causal relationship examined in the current article. Because network size may influence individuals’ political perceptions and behaviors (e.g., Valenzuela et al., 2012), it is important to ensure that the effect of disagreement on polarization is independent from peoples’ discussion network size. Thus, an additional control variable, discussion network size, was included in Study 2, although it was not controlled in Study 1. Therefore, including Korea’s case in this study provides more thorough evidence for the hypothesized relationships and strengthens the generalization of those relationships to other countries little examined in the current literature.

Method

Study 1

Data and Sample

The data for the U.S. case (Study 1) come from the 2008 National Annenberg Election Survey (NAES), a rolling cross-sectional study based on surveys administered to a random sample of Americans throughout the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign (Johnston & Brady, 2002; see Kenski, Hardy, & Jamieson, 2010 for details about a rolling cross-sectional design). Interviews with 57,967 respondents were completed for this survey. The response rate was 23%.²

Measurement

Polarization

In Study 1, following previous research (Stroud, 2010), polarization was conceptualized in terms of attitudes toward candidates. Respondents were asked to rate their attitudes toward both McCain and Obama on an 11-point scale ranging from 0 = very unfavorable to 10 = very favorable. Polarization was measured by taking the absolute value of the difference between ratings of McCain and Obama for each respondent (range = 0 to 10, M = 3.88, SD = 2.80); higher values indicate more polarized political attitudes.

Selective media exposure

There are two approaches to selective exposure measurement. That is, one approach to measuring selective exposure is based on respondents’ perceptions of the political leanings of media content (i.e., perception measure), whereas the other approach is to determine the slant of media content (i.e., actual measure). This study uses both approaches—the perception approach for the U.S. case and the actual measures approach for the Korean case. For Study 1, the perception approach is used. Using this approach, respondents are asked to self-report whether the media content that they use is similar to or different from their own political views. The self-reported perception approach has been used in prior studies to measure respondents’ likeminded and counter-attitudinal perspectives of mass media as well as interpersonal discussion networks (Johnson et al., 2009; Kim, 2011; Mutz & Martin, 2001; Scheufele, Hardy, Brossard, Waismel-Manor, & Nisbet, 2006; Valenzuela et al., 2012). For example, Johnson et al. (2009) measured selective exposure to blogs by asking respondents to indicate how frequently they visited political blogs that provide information about politics with which they agree and disagree. Research on interpersonal discussion has adopted a similar approach, relying on respondents’ self-reports about their discussants’ political leanings or support of a candidate/party (Eveland & Hively, 2009; Huckfeldt & Sprague, 1995; Scheufele et al., 2006; Valenzuela et al., 2012). Mutz and Martin (2001) argued that perceptual measures of political leaning are more appropriate than actual measures and adopted the respondents’ perceptions of similarity or dissimilarity of views. For exposure to similar or dissimilar perspectives to stimulate individuals’ cognitive processes, it should be perceived as similar or dissimilar (Mutz & Martin, 2001). In another study, which examined how exposure to dissimilar perspectives influences citizens’ political engagement, Mutz (2002a) used perceptual measures of disagreement with a similar argument that it is based on respondents’ “perceptions of their discussants that should shape their tendency to engage or withdraw politically” (p. 842).

The 2008 NAES included items asking the respondents which candidates they thought the media they used favored during the campaign; the media outlets included TV news, political talk radio programs, newspapers, and the Internet for campaign information. Respondents who named all four news media outlets (i.e., TV news, talk radio programs, newspapers, and the Internet) were then asked regarding the media outlet they used most often, which presidential candidate they thought that a particular outlet favored during the campaign, or whether they thought the media outlet favored no candidate. For each media outlet, two dichotomous variables were created (dummy-coded “1” if the respondent reported yes, and “0” if no): one for using a media outlet favoring McCain, and one for using a media outlet favoring Obama. Note that these two media use indices are not the operational definition of “selective exposure,” but indicate the extent to which all of the respondents in the final sample used media outlets favoring McCain and Obama, respectively, regardless of their political ideology and partisanship. In other words, exposure to media outlets favoring McCain included both conservatives’ and liberals’ media consumption favoring McCain and vice versa. Following previous studies, selective exposure was operationalized by matching respondents’ party identification and the political slant of the news media respondents consumed (Dilliplane, 2011; Garrett et al., 2014). That is, for Republicans, selective exposure is the number of news platforms used with a Republican slant (i.e., Republicans using media outlets favoring McCain), while for Democrats, selective exposure is the number of news outlets used with a Democratic slant (i.e., Democrats using media outlets favoring Obama). Because the variable was skewed (range = 0 to 4, M = 0.47, SD = 0.70, Skewness = 1.48), the natural logarithm was computed to make positively skewed distribution more normal (M = 0.13, SD = 0.17, Skewness = .91). Respondents who are non-partisans or independent were omitted from the main analyses as it was not possible to classify media outlets favoring either Obama or McCain as likeminded selective exposure for these individuals (see, for example, Garrett & Stroud, 2014).

Disagreement

As in previous research on disagreement (e.g., Feldman & Price, 2008), disagreement in this study was measured by asking respondents to report to what extent they talk about politics with disagreeing discussion partners. Respondents in the United States were asked about their general political disagreement in their political conversations among their friends and family (see Klofstad et al., 2013), ranging from 1 (none) to 5 (great deal; M = 2.51, SD = 0.98).

Control variables

Other variables such as demographics, political orientation, and news media use were included as controls in the analyses because the literature has demonstrated their relationships with polarization (Lee, Choi, Kim, & Kim, 2014; Stroud, 2011; Wojcieszak & Rojas, 2011). A description of all of the control variables used in the analysis is provided in the appendix.

Study 2

Data and Sample

The data for Study 2 were drawn from a two-wave Korean national panel study conducted by a professional survey company. The company recruits panelists to take part in periodic surveys in exchange for incentives. Both waves of the survey were administered online. The first wave was conducted in December 2012. To proportionally represent the Korean population, a stratified quota sampling method was used based on Korean Census figures for gender, age, and geography. The matched sample using census data to provide a more accurate representation of the population has been validated by previous research (Iyengar & Hahn, 2009; Kim, Chen, & Gil de Zúñiga, 2013). A total of 526 participants completed the survey. The second wave of data collection took place in June 2014. In the second wave, 304 original respondents completed the survey questionnaire, yielding a retention rate of 57.8%.

Measurement

Polarization

In Study 2, opinion polarization about a specific issue was measured. The construction of a transmission tower in Miryang city has been a controversial issue in South Korea because of environmental and political concerns. In general, liberals are against the construction, while conservatives favor it (Choe, 2013). Following prior studies (Lee et al., 2014; Wojcieszak & Rojas, 2011), respondents were asked to rate their preference about the construction of the tower on a 7-point scale in the second wave (M = 3.94, SD = 1.69). Issue polarization was measured by folding the scale (M = 1.25, SD = 1.14; range = 0-3; higher values indicate greater polarization).

Selective media exposure

For Study 2, which uses the actual measures approach (Holbert, Hmielowski, & Weeks, 2012; Iyengar & Hahn, 2009), respondents were asked to report their level of exposure to four news media in the Wave 1 survey—Chosun Ilbo, Donga Ilbo, Hangyeore, and Kyunghyang. The first two are conservative news media and have the highest circulation in Korea, while the latter two are liberal news outlets (Kim, 2012). Each news media use was measured by asking how frequently respondents were exposed to each news outlet on a 7-point scale (1 = never to 7 = very frequently). The responses for Chosun Ilbo and Donga Ilbo were averaged for “conservative media” use (r = .50, p < .001), while the responses for Hangyeore and Kyunghyang were averaged for “liberal media” use (r = .76, p < .001). Matching those two media uses with participants’ political ideology,³ selective exposure was defined as media use corresponding with respondents’ political leanings—that is, conservatives use conservative media, and liberals use liberal media (M = 3.35, SD = 1.80). As in Study 1, respondents who identified as moderate were omitted from main analyses as it was not possible to classify ideological media outlets as likeminded media exposure for them.

Disagreement

Respondents from Wave 2 were asked to report how frequently they talked about politics with “discussants having dissimilar opinions” and “those who have different political ideology” on a 7-point scale (1 = never to 7 = very frequently). Two items were averaged to create an index of disagreement (M = 3.67, SD = 1.31, Cronbach’s α = .85).

Control variables

Other control variables including demographics, political orientation, and news media use were included in the analyses (see the appendix).

Statistical Analysis

For both Studies 1 and 2, hierarchical ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models were conducted to examine hypotheses (see, for example, Eveland & Scheufele, 2000; Nir, 2005). Following traditional OLS methods for testing interaction effects, the variables of the main effects were first standardized for the computation of the interaction term, which is created by multiplying selective exposure and disagreement (Cohen & Cohen, 1983; Eveland, 1997).

Results

The two data sets were analyzed separately.⁴ Table 1 presents the results of regression analysis for the U.S. case (see Study 1). H1 hypothesized that individuals’ selective exposure will be positively associated with polarized political attitudes. As shown in Table 1, findings showed that partisan selective media use was found to have a significant relationship with attitude polarization (β = .115, p < .001), controlling for respondents’ demographic variables (R² = 10.3%) and political variables and news media use (R² = 12.4%), supporting H1. In addition, disagreement was negatively associated with polarization (β = −.083, p < .001).

Table 1.

Regression Analysis of Attitude Polarization.

	Study 1	Study 2
Demographics
Sex (female)	.068***	−.104
Age	.034*	.146*
Education	−.049**	.156*
Income	−.018	.013
Race (non-White)	.067***	—
Incremental R²	.022***	.103***
Predispositions and news use
Partisanship/ideology strength	.248***	.248***
Political efficacy	.019	.014
Political interest	.154***	.069
Political knowledge	−.030	.188**
TV news	−.015	.139
Talk radio	.027	−.032
Newspaper	.006	−.089
Internet for campaign information	.041*	−.102
Discussion network size	—	.019
Incremental R²	.124***	.139***
Selective exposure and disagreement
Selective exposure	.115***	.208**
Disagreement discussion	−.083***	−.078
Incremental R²	.022***	.044**
Interaction
Selective exposure × Disagreement	−.044**	.139*
Incremental R²	.002**	.017*
Total R²	.165***	.303***
N	3,804	213

Note. Cell entries represent standardized coefficients from OLS regression equations. The measurements for attitudinal polarization, discussion network size, and disagreement discussion in Study 2 came from Wave 2. Respondents who identified as independent/moderate were excluded from the model in accordance with the operational definition of selective exposure. OLS = ordinary least squares.

p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

Turning to the moderating role of disagreement in political polarization (H2), disagreement turned out to significantly moderate the relationship between selective media use and polarization (β = −.044, p < .01). The interaction between selective exposure and disagreement on polarization is plotted in Figure 1. It shows a steeper slope for the low disagreement situation than the high disagreement condition, indicating that people having a greater amount of disagreement in their political discussion showed lower levels of attitudinal polarization toward candidates compared with those who have less disagreement.

Figure 1.

Interaction between selective exposure and disagreement on polarization (Study 1).

Next, turning to the Korean data set, the results of the regression model predicting attitudinal polarization lend support to H1 (see Study 2 in Table 1). Selective exposure was significantly associated with more polarized attitudes about a political issue (β = .208, p < .01), controlling for respondents’ demographics (R² = 10.3%) and political variables including political discussion network size and news media use (R² = 13.9%).

The interaction term showed a significant coefficient (β = .139, p < .05). Its relationship is plotted in Figure 2. It demonstrates that individuals high in disagreement showed lower levels of polarization when they reported lower selective media use compared with those who were low in disagreement. However, in the situation of high selective exposure, it suggests otherwise—that is, respondents with high disagreement showed higher degrees of polarization than individuals low in disagreement.

Figure 2.

Interaction between selective exposure and disagreement on polarization (Study 2).

Discussion

This study investigated the relationship between selective exposure, interpersonal political disagreement, and polarization by using data sets collected in two different countries, the United States and South Korea. It first examined how individuals’ selective exposure is associated with attitudinal polarization. The results across the two nations confirmed that individuals’ selective likeminded media use was associated with greater polarized attitudes, consistent with previous studies (e.g., Stroud, 2010). The findings from the data set gathered from the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign period also provide evidence that selective exposure may lead to polarized attitudes. In particular, this study contributes to the current literature, which mainly focuses on polarization in the United States, by providing evidence from two waves of panel survey data in a different political setting (i.e., South Korea) that selective likeminded media use significantly influenced attitudinal polarization. One explanation for this finding could be that although Korea has a multiparty system, it is largely divided into two main parties (i.e., one conservative and one liberal), and citizens have shown ideologically contrasting views on various public issues (Lee, 2011; Shin & Straub, 2012). Another reason may be that the mainstream news media outlets measured in this study have been main news sources for Korean citizens (Lee & Kim, 2014), which might strengthen the effects of exposure to ideological news on individuals’ political attitudes.

More importantly, the primary purpose of the current study was to examine the moderating role of disagreement in the relationship between selective exposure and political polarization. There have been concerns about the relationship between selective exposure and political polarization—that is, if people expose themselves to news and information similar to their preexisting beliefs, they will be more fragmented and polarized (Sunstein, 2001). With those concerns in mind, this study was designed to investigate whether disagreement in interpersonal political discussion networks mitigates the polarization process derived from likeminded media use. The results from the U.S. context document, as hypothesized, that encountering dissimilar opinions through interpersonal discussion networks weakened the association between partisan media use and political polarization.

These findings have implications for a democratic society. Scholars have long been concerned that avoiding disagreement and ignoring dissimilar or opinion-challenging information may hurt democracy. That is, if people expose themselves only to congenial points of view and avoid challenging information and perspectives, they are less likely to be tolerant of challenging viewpoints (Mutz, 2002b), and society may become fragmented and polarized as a result (Sunstein, 2007). The results from the interaction relationship provide empirical evidence in this area of literature that these concerns are valid given that the polarization gap between those with high disagreement and low disagreement became wider when people consumed a larger amount of likeminded media (i.e., people high in selective exposure and low in disagreement showed the most polarized attitudes). As demonstrated in previous research and this study, individuals’ selective exposure indeed contributes to political polarization. Results of the current study, however, demonstrate the potential role of political diversity within individuals’ discussion networks in facilitating exposure to political differences or hearing the other side (Mutz, 2006), thereby contributing to understanding of dissimilar opinions and reducing the polarization process.

There are noteworthy findings regarding the interaction effects of disagreement on polarization from the Korean data. The depolarizing effects of disagreement were found only among those who exert low levels of selective exposure. For those who use greater selective exposure, respondents with high disagreement showed greater levels of polarization than individuals low in disagreement, indicating that disagreement leads to more polarized attitudes rather than attenuating polarization. This is in contrast to the normative role of disagreement in a democracy (Mutz, 2002b; Price et al., 2002). Some research actually suggests that those who practice selective exposure sometimes seek counter-attitudinal information to understand the other side so that they can be better armed in arguments against that side (Garrett, 2009; Holbert et al., 2012; Johnson & Kaye, 2013; Knobloch-Westerwick, 2012; Knobloch-Westerwick & Meng, 2009). This study’s findings provide evidence that in such cases, exposure to disagreement in discussion networks does little to benefit democracy. One possible explanation could be that the motivation for exposing oneself to dissimilar perspectives is to critique or counter rather than understand the opposite side (Taber & Lodge, 2006). Garrett et al. (2014) argue that depolarization is less likely to happen if people “only listen to the argument made by their counterparts with an eye toward rejecting them” (p. 324). Given that the issue in Korea was still going on and very controversial when the survey was conducted, people from each side who were armed in their arguments through practicing selective exposure might want to discuss the issue to critique or reject the other side’s perspectives. In the context of the 2008 U.S. Presidential election in which Obama was ahead of McCain throughout the campaign period, voters might not have strong motivations to critique counterparts because it was clear that their candidate was going to lose (for conservatives) or win (for liberals). Perhaps there are unique political attributes and media systems in the United States and Korea. For example, the level of political tolerance may differ across the two countries so that mechanisms and effects of political discussion with dissimilar others might be different. Especially in Korea, where the ideological mainstream news outlets have been dominant for a long time, perhaps arguments from ideological news could have been perceived as very reasonable and used as rationale when encountering challenging point of views. With the intriguing findings of both depolarizing and reinforcing effects of disagreement, future researchers should further examine what theoretical mechanisms and contexts may lead to such differences.

Overall, findings from both countries provide clear evidence that selective media exposure is associated with individuals’ attitudinal polarization, which adds to the growing literature that suggests the robustness of the reinforcing effect of ideologically slanted media on political polarization (see Garrett et al., 2014). This study adds to the empirical evidence of the consequences of selective exposure on attitudinal polarization from results replicated across data sets collected in different countries. The present investigation also advances our knowledge of the role of disagreement in the relationship between selective exposure and polarization. Taken together, this study’s findings both support and challenge claims that disagreement may help the democratic system in attenuating citizens’ extreme and polarized attitudes. Although disagreement helps attenuate individuals’ polarized attitudes formed from likeminded media consumption in most cases (e.g., regardless of the levels of selective exposure in Study 1 and when selective exposure is low in Study 2), the results from the Korean data demonstrate that disagreement within one’s discussion network further polarizes citizens among those who practice high levels of selective exposure.

These findings imply that exposure to political difference may contribute, in general, to mitigating a polarized society, which supports optimistic views of the role of disagreement in enhancing democracy by helping citizens to better understand dissimilar opinions and challenging points of views. Disagreement may produce benefits, such as increasing citizens’ political tolerance and understanding of the rationale for opposing viewpoints, but it may also even further polarize people who heavily rely on ideologically slanted likeminded media. Given the mixed benefits and consequences of exposure to disagreement, the debate over the role of ideologically slanted media and whether interactions with disagreeing people should be encouraged or discouraged remains controversial. These mixed findings open a potentially fruitful avenue for further investigations in this area. For instance, identifying factors that contribute to such differences has obvious theoretical and practical importance among scholars in this area.

There are limitations to this study as well as directions for future studies. First, due to the secondary data set used in Study 1, this study is limited to considering disagreement with friends and family as a single item. Although existing measures of disagreement usually capture one dimension, disagreement in one’s social networks could have multiple dimensions (e.g., degree and scope; see Klofstad et al., 2013). Empirical studies provide evidence supporting different roles of social settings in exposure to political perspectives. For example, research has demonstrated that social settings such as the workplace are likely to contribute to exposure to heterogeneous views, while settings such as church, volunteer groups, and family would lead to more exposure to likeminded individuals (Mutz, 2006; Mutz & Mondak, 2006; Scheufele et al., 2004). Measurement of disagreement in this study is consistent with previous research (e.g., Feldman & Price, 2008)—that is, asking respondents to report how much disagreement was involved in their conversations about politics with their friends and family. When thinking of friends as discussion partners, participants may refer to friends from any setting, such as the workplace, church, or voluntary associations, that might be able to capture comprehensive social settings of interpersonal discussion. Nevertheless, given that studies have demonstrated differences in the level of disagreement among family members and among other groups, future research ought to examine whether and how disagreement in different social settings influences the relationship between selective exposure and polarization.

Second, due to the cross-sectional nature of data analyzed in Study 1, this study cannot be fully confident in the causal relationships among variables. For example, it is likely that people with stronger polarized views may be more likely to engage in selective exposure. Prior research has demonstrated that the relationship between selective exposure and polarization flowed both ways but was stronger for selective exposure to polarization (Stroud, 2010). To overcome the issues of causality, nevertheless, the second study used a two-wave panel survey of Korean adults, which allows us to confirm the causal relationship that goes from selective exposure to political polarization.⁵

It is important to note that the effect sizes of the interaction terms were not large although they were statistically significant. It turned out that the interaction terms between selective exposure and disagreement explained a small amount of additional variance after controlling for all other control variables. Particularly given the large sample size of Study 1, interaction terms between selective exposure and disagreement yield a relatively weak strength of association. Therefore, despite the statistically significant associations, the interpretation of the magnitude of impact should be tempered. Nevertheless, it should also be noted that the relationships are still significant even after a host of control variables were taken into account including the respondents’ demographic variables, political predispositions, and news media use.

There are several other directions for future studies. First, it is worth noting that some control variables were significantly associated with polarization. In particular, citizens’ political interest and strength of partisanship were strong predictors of political polarization among a set of control variables. Future researchers, then, could go beyond direct associations among variables and test the possible mediating mechanisms. For example, a topic of interest could be whether and how political orientation (e.g., political interest) influences citizens’ political behaviors such as political participation and media consumption behaviors, which consequently lead to attitudinal polarization. Other variables may attenuate the influence of partisan media use on political participation. For example, because interpersonal trust and political tolerance may limit the tendency for people to attribute their own perspectives to the general public (Wojcieszak & Price, 2009), those aspects might also mitigate the polarizing effects of partisan selective exposure. Future research about the role of other variables in enhancing or attenuating polarization is warranted.

Footnotes

Appendix

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was partially supported by a Phifer Fund awarded by the Department of Telecommunication and Film in the College of Communication and Information Sciences at the University of Alabama.

Notes

Author Biography

Yonghwan Kim (PhD, University of Texas at Austin) is an assistant professor in the Department of Telecommunication and Film at the University of Alabama. His research interests include emerging communication technologies such as digital/social media, public opinion, and media psychology.

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