Analysis: Attitudes are not individual, but collective products negotiated and defined through group interactions, with real-world consequences
In today's day and age, many of our social interactions are online. Social media sites, where much of our online time is spent, maximise attitude-based communication (for example tweets and retweets on Twitter/X, posts, likes, and reactions on Facebook, up and down votes on reddit).
Our research at the University of Limerick across the psychology and maths departments has found that people can foster psychological connection and group identities based on the knowledge that they share attitudes. This means that the groups we belong to are no longer constrained by geographical borders or always guided by physical symbols like the way we look (e.g., race, how we dress, how we talk). In the online context, it is always possible to find (and purposefully seek out) others who share our attitudes, potentially making what may once have been idiosyncratic attitudes prominent, and linking people who may not have otherwise formed a social bond.
Our ingroups are influential as we generally tend to assume that others in our groups hold correct attitudes and values, and behave in appropriate ways. We look to others in our groups for verification and guidance for appropriate behaviour, norms, and attitudes. Thus, social influence is facilitated through our social identity relationships with others.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTÉ Radio 1's Today with Claire Byrne, Beyond the pub: how do young people meet new friends and partners?
In our current research we tested the effect of group identity on attitude expression. We wanted to see whether interaction with ingroup members can motivate people to align their attitudes. Conversely, we wanted to see whether people interacting with outgroup members will be motivated to disalign their attitudes. We ran an experiment and also assessed millions of people’s attitudes on twitter, using attitudes relating to the war in Ukraine. The results of the experiment demonstrated that people interacting with ingroup members synchronised their attitudes. For those interacting with outgroup members we observed attitude polarisation.
Results of the Twitter study suggest that groups of followers tended to use similar hashtags relating to the war in Ukraine depending on what 'group/community’ they are part of. Taken together, the results of the experiment and the Twitter study strongly imply that attitudes are not individual but are collective products negotiated and defined through group interactions, and that depend on the ingroup/outgroup relationships between interactors.
Recognising that attitude expression is constrained by social identity is crucial in helping us understand how attitude alignment or synchronisation in social networks occurs. Social movements created from attitude alignment on social media are powerful mobilisers of social change and social action. Many impactful social movements have mobilised on Twitter such as #Metoo; #Notallmen and #BlackLivesMatter; #AllLivesMatter. Recognising that people may publicly share attitudes online as a result of their social identity may help to explain why certain attitudes in particular are spread and go viral.
Read more: 3 ways associations can offer an antidote to populism
Attitudes that are strongly linked to our group identities (for example our attitudes regarding abortion or equality) are more amenable to being shared online. Attitudes that gain social power are likely constrained by social identity and this has knock-on societal effects as the attitudes that people choose to share on social media have macro-level consequences. For example, sharing attitudes about sanctioning Russia on Twitter may have had knock-on effects, such as companies pulling out of Russia. In the process, the identities associated with these attitudes can change or consolidate, producing further societal effects.
Understanding why and how attitudes become aligned is also fundamental to understanding processes of social influence, including promoting positive social influence (e.g., vaccine uptake) and resisting negative social influence (misinformation, bot influence). The resolution of many global problems (such as climate change) requires group attitude alignment to be successful.
Speculatively speaking, these results suggest that tackling large scale social issues that require attitude synchronisation for their efficacy (e.g., vaccine uptake) may need to go beyond logical or rational arguments, and consider the group nature of attitudes and attitude interactions. Our results suggest that sharing/expressing commonly held attitudes may heighten the likelihood of attitude alignment on a subsequent target attitude one is hoping to change/influence. Attitudes shared by others already perceived as ingroup members may be particularly influential.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
From RTÉ Radio 1's Morning Ireland, Social media 'bombarding' boys and men with misogynist content - study
Of course, the same processes of influence could also be harnessed by those attempting to influence attitudes in a socially harmful way (e.g., vaccine conspiracies) but also to protect against such attempts.
These social psychological mechanisms are likely exploited by ‘bots’ on social media: a bot that has previously shared attitudes or tweets that we agree with may have particularly strong influence on future attitudes. Our results also suggest that purposeful misinformation can undermine consensus, especially if that misinformation is coming from accounts that have previously shared attitudes congruent with one’s own attitudes, or those accounts are perceived to represent ingroup members.
Now more than ever before, in the era where humans and bots are engaging in a constant process of attitude sharing online, it is vital to recognise that attitudes are not individual but are collective products negotiated and defined through group interactions. That is, the attitudes that enter the social world, and thus social reality itself, seem to be contingent on the identity relationships between interactants.
Follow RTÉ Brainstorm on WhatsApp and Instagram for more stories and updates
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
