Glossary
The terms that come up most in the argument about polarization, in plain words, with who coined or studied them.
- Affective polarization
- Dislike and distrust of the other party and the people in it, as distinct from disagreement over policy. Shanto Iyengar and colleagues brought the term into wide use in 2012. Source: Iyengar, Sood and Lelkes (2012), Public Opinion Quarterly
- Civil discourse
- Conversation about contested questions in which people argue in good faith and treat one another as people worth answering, however firmly they disagree. It does not require agreement, or even politeness above all else.
- Common ground
- What two people who disagree find they both believe. On this site, a Common Ground statement is one sentence that both people in a conversation have confirmed. It is a place to begin, and it does not end the disagreement.
- Contact hypothesis
- The idea, set out by Gordon Allport in 1954, that contact between members of different groups can reduce prejudice, especially under conditions such as equal status and shared goals. A 2006 meta-analysis of 515 studies by Pettigrew and Tropp found that contact typically does reduce prejudice. Source: Pettigrew and Tropp (2006), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
- Deep canvassing
- A style of conversation, usually at the door, built on asking questions and exchanging personal stories without judgment. Broockman and Kalla found in a 2016 field experiment that one such conversation reduced prejudice against transgender people for at least three months. Source: Broockman and Kalla (2016), Science
- Echo chamber
- A community in which outside voices are not merely missing but actively distrusted. The philosopher C. Thi Nguyen separates it from an epistemic bubble, where other views simply never reach you. Source: C. Thi Nguyen, Echo Chambers and Epistemic Bubbles, Episteme
- Epistemic bubble
- A situation in which relevant views are left out, often by accident. In Nguyen’s account, a bubble can burst when you meet the missing information, whereas an echo chamber has taught you in advance not to trust it. Source: C. Thi Nguyen, Echo Chambers and Epistemic Bubbles, Episteme
- Exhausted majority
- More in Common’s name, from its 2018 Hidden Tribes report, for the roughly two-thirds of Americans it found to be fed up with polarization and more flexible than the loudest voices on either wing. Source: More in Common (2018), Hidden Tribes
- Filter bubble
- Eli Pariser’s 2011 term for the personal information world that algorithms may build around you by showing you more of what you already click. How strong the effect is remains contested. Source: Filter bubble, Wikipedia overview with sources
- Ideological polarization
- How far apart people’s actual policy positions and beliefs are. It is a separate measure from affective polarization, and the two do not always move together.
- Moral reframing
- Making an argument in terms of the values the listener holds rather than the ones the speaker holds. Matthew Feinberg and Robb Willer have studied it as a way to persuade across political lines. Source: Feinberg and Willer (2019), Social and Personality Psychology Compass
- Perception gap
- The difference between what people believe the other party thinks and what members of that party say they think. More in Common’s 2019 study measured it across policy questions. Source: More in Common (2019), The Perception Gap
- Reverse echo chamber
- This project’s own description of itself: instead of surrounding you with people who agree, it introduces you to one person who does not, on an issue you both care about. It is not an established scientific term.