Talk:Group polarization

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 7 July 2020 and 14 August 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Yaluys.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 22:48, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Irrelevant Observation
- It's an irrelevant observation to say that the Federalist papers support the idea of Risky Shift. Risky shift is the idea that a group will make a different risk/benefit decision than an individual acting alone, that the group will take more risk than an individual acting alone. Yet if we take that group, and put them in charge of another group or an individual, they will always make a riskier decision for that group than they would themselves. In addition, if an individual is put in charge of a group, or even another individual, they will always make a more risky decision than they would for themselves. It's not a valid comparison - Risky shift is comparing a group/an individual making a decision for THEMSELVES, whereas the comparison with the Federalist Papers/Gov't, is a group/individual making a risk decision FOR OTHERS. The two simply are not comparable - the group may take greater risks than the individual when making a decision for themselves, but both the individual and group will take even greater risks when "their ass isn't on the line". To compare the two scenarios is just not a fair or equitable comparison, which is why I took it out Xmacro (talk) 16:28, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Factual/logic error
This sentence cannot possibly be correct: "It is more accurate to say that following discussion, a group's actions will be a more extreme version of each individual's preferred action." since "each individual" may have a completely different preferred action. I'm not sure what was intended, but I think it was "...a more extreme version of the generally preferred action of the majority of the group members" or something similar. —  SMcCandlish  &#91;talk&#93; &#91;cont&#93; ‹(-¿-)› 09:52, 18 July 2008 (UTC)

Lack of citations
There are several sections of this article that have no citations, like the section on the Holocaust and in the section about group-induced attitude polarization. Citations would help with the validity of this article.

Czarinaoftokyo (talk) 04:32, 6 February 2012 (UTC)Czarinaoftokyo

Educational assignment
Hello I am a student in a Dickinson College Psychology Class and I am interested in working on this article. One change that I think would be beneficial is changing the layout of the article so that the empirical findings are listed with the theory they support, instead of having a separate "major empirical findings" section later on in the article. Hollidaa (talk) 16:56, 22 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Hollidaa. I think you are correct and it is generally a good thing to have an extra editor in the mix. This article certainly needs it. Might I suggest “Social Influence” by John Turner (1991) for a review of these theories and their related empirical work. Although there is a good chance you already are using that resource. Cheers Andrew (talk) 00:04, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the Welcome Andrew! Hollidaa (talk)

I am planning to edit this article, focusing on adding citations. Below is a list of articles that I am reading and hoping to use to edit this page. Hollidaa (talk)

Brauer, M., Judd, C. M., & Gliner, M. D. (1995). The effects of repeated expressions on attitude polarization during group discussions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68(6). - I plan to use this article to provide additional info to the informational influence section. Hinsz, V.B. (1984). Persuasive arguments theory, group polarization, and choice shifts. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 10(2). -I plan to use this article to provide additional info to the informational influence section.

Isenberg, D.J. (1986). Group polarization: A critical review and meta-analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50(6).This article provides a lot of info about group polarization, much of which as already been included in the article. I plan to use this source to provide citations for the article. Lamm, H. (1988). A review of our research on group polarization: Eleven experiments on the effects of group discussion on risk acceptance, probability estimation, and negotiation positions. Psychological Reports, 62(3). -I plan to use this article to provide additional info to the informational influence section.

Ledgerwood, A., Chaiken, S. (2007). Priming us and them: Automatic assimilation and contrast in group attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93(6), 940-956.-I plan to use this article to provide additional info to the social comparison theory section.

Mackie, D.M. (1986). Social identification effects in group polarization. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 50(4) 720-728. -I plan to use this article to provide additional info to the social comparison theory section.

Van Swol, L.M. (2009). Extreme members and group polarization. Social Influence, 4(3), 185-199. - I plan to use this source to provide additional info for both theories Zuber, J.A., Crott, H.W., Werner, J. (1992). Choice shift and group polarization: An analysis of the status of arguments and social decision schemes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62(1). - I plan to use this article to provide additional info to the informational influence section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hollidaa (talk • contribs) 17:13, 29 February 2012 (UTC)

Above I have added how I plan to use each source beside the source name. In editing the page, I am planning to focus on the social comparison theory and informational influence theory sections of the article. I believe that the current layout of the page is somewhat confusing to read, so I plan to re-organize the sections. My plan is to keep the overview and history and orgins sections in the beginning as they are. However, under the major theoretical approaches section I would like to go through both the social comparison theory and informational influence theory, including the major empirical findings for both theories with this section. Readers would then be able to read about the theory and the research backing it in one section instead of having to jump around. --Hollidaa (talk) 15:58, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Educational Project
Hi, I also am working on this article for a class assignment. I am a psychology major at the University of Dayton. I plan to look at the internet sub-heading to add both supporting and challenging references. I plan on looking for studies relating to the online bullying example in the internet. I also plan on adding information regarding cautious shift. Psyhistorykn (talk) 16:44, 21 March 2012 (UTC)psyhistorykn


 * Sounds great Psyhistorykn... I should not interfere with your work, as I am just focusing on the psychological aspects of group polarization and do not plan on editing the internet sub-heading.Hollidaa (talk) 00:55, 28 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I have began editing the article in my sandbox : user hollidaa:sandbox Hollidaa (talk) 00:55, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Revision of edits
Some editors were wondering why I had removed the "empirical evidence" section from my edits to the article. I believe that the current layout of the article is confusing. You present the soical influence and informational influence theories, but then have to jump half-way down the page to get to the research in support of these theories. I think that the evidence supporting each theory should be under the heading for that theory. I preserved all of the information from the empirical evidence section and simply re-organized it, in what I believed was a more logical order. Please feel free to provide feedback. Hollidaa (talk) 19:17, 10 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Hollidaa. I would support Toddst1’s revision of your activity. There were multiple issues with your good faith edits and I do not believe Toddst1’s only concern was the change in structure. I would recommend that you a) ensure your work is consistent with the referencing syntax that Wikipedia uses, b) remember to provide a brief description of the nature of each edit (referring to the talk page if appropriate), and c) familiarize yourself with the “show preview” function (no one wants to witness your many missteps). If you do these things I believe your edits will be more likely to be accepted by others. I hope this helps. Cheers Andrew (talk) 05:40, 11 April 2012 (UTC)

Use of primary sources
There has been some concerns about the sources that I have added to the article. In the field of Psychology, peer-reviewed journal articles are used to confirm information. We no longer use books or mongraphs because that is simply not how scientists communicate nowadays. There is an article on "confirmation bias" that was awarded good article status, which also references scientific peer-reviewed journals. In regards to the unpublished thesis, the first time the phenomenon of group polarization was ever mentioned was by James Stoner in his unpublished masters thesis of 1961. While I realize this is not an ideal source, I decided to include this citation in case readers want to read his first words on group polarization. Hollidaa (talk) 03:12, 2 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Hi Holida. I am shocked to learn that scientist don’t communicate using books any more. Looks like I have been going about research all wrong. Thanks for letting me know.


 * Jokes aside, thank you for bringing this issue to the talk page. This should be applauded and I look forward to hearing whether LauraHale agrees with your assessment. My only suggestion might be that it is sometimes good practice to await a response before reverting someone else’s good faith edits. Perhaps there is some compromise that might arise out of the discussion. I would hate for you to adopt an indefensibly strong “pro empirical articles” stance in response to LauraHale’s position. Given the article in question, the irony might cause someone to have an aneurysm. Kind regards Andrew (talk) 11:51, 2 May 2012 (UTC)

Merger proposal
I propose that groupshift be merged into group polarization. The former article seems to be pretty clearly covering the same topic. In terms of the direction of the merge, in my experience group polarization is the term used in contemporary academia, and in my view it better captures the phenomenon. What do others think? Cheers Andrew (talk) 02:13, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
 * There are two merger proposals. Trying to do both makes no sense, but each has its rationale.  I urge that neither merger be pursued and that the top of this article continue to contain links to both other articles (for which a merger had been considered). MaynardClark (talk) 04:27, 9 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Hi MaynardClark. I don't quite follow you. Is there some procedural issue that you are raising, or are you objecting to all of the above mergers on content grounds? If the latter, would you be able to explain why you don't think one or a number of these mergers should take place? Cheers Andrew (talk) 05:31, 9 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Hi all, I'm a grad student in the social psychology dept at UCLA and I'm planning to make some edits to this page; specifically, I'd like to merge group polarization with attitude polarization, remove the content for which there are no citations, clarify some of the language/eliminate some redundancies on both pages, and cut down on a lot of the descriptions of empirical work, since I don't think that's really the function of a Wiki page. For those who want to learn more about the research, the citations in the article are readily available for them to pursue and read on their own.Lmgoldst (talk) 17:00, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Fixed Subheading "Government, Public Policy, and Law"

 * I removed the original material that wasn't based on research and replaced with more empirical material and in-line citations. Should be OK now.Lmgoldst (talk) 20:17, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Merged attitude polarization page here

 * I merged attitude polarization page here, and kept virtually all content besides the subheader re: group membership, as that became redundant once the pages were combined.Lmgoldst (talk) 02:49, 18 November 2016 (UTC)