Echo chambers... Contrary to this prediction, we found that moderate and uncertain participants showed a nonreciprocal attraction towards extreme and confident individuals

Zimmerman, Federico, Gerry Garbulsky, Dan Ariely, Mariano Sigman, and Joaquin Navajas. 2020. “The Nonreciprocal and Polarizing Nature of Interpersonal Attraction in Political Discussions.” PsyArXiv. August 21. doi:10.31234/osf.io/b9645

Abstract: Echo chambers in public debates are thought to emerge because people display greater preference for those holding similar political views. However, this idea requires careful testing because similarity correlates with other quantities which may drive interpersonal attraction, such as differences in political orientation, attitude extremity, and certainty. Here, we tested the attraction-similarity hypothesis in a study with an unprecedentedly large number of ecological one-shot pairwise political discussions. This setting allowed us examining a key prediction implicit in this account: liking should be reciprocal due to the symmetric nature of similarity. Contrary to this prediction, we found that moderate and uncertain participants showed a nonreciprocal attraction towards extreme and confident individuals. These results are explained by an asymmetric model where liking is modulated by the consistency and certainty of political opinions. We provide converging evidence supporting this account from quantitative model-comparison analyses and an empirical replication in an independent study. Overall, these results reject the widely spread view that political homophily drives social interactions and shed light on a principle of interpersonal attraction that may help understanding the polarization of societies.