| As polarization becomes a popular social topic, a new interest in applying findings in polarization studies from cognitive psychology to studying polarization phenomenon in political science and public communication has been developed in the past two decades. In psychology, polarization is a special case of attitude change: participants become more extreme instead of moderated when they are presented with mixed evidence. Previous studies in psychology found that only participants with strong prior attitudes demonstrated polarization when they were presented with counterattitudinal arguments. The explanation was that polarization was a result of biased assimilation; that is, participants preferred arguments compatible with their prior attitudes over arguments incompatible with their prior attitudes.;The present study reviewed two theoretical approaches in biased information processing within psychology and two lines of empirical studies from psychology and political science respectively. Based on the review, I proposed an alternative explanation of the mechanism of polarization phenomenon: polarization is a solely affective-based, motivated process. Five experiments were conducted to look for evidence for two research hypotheses: Hypothesis 1: participants with moderate prior attitudes towards capital punishment would demonstrate polarization when the political principle associated with the argument was salient; Hypothesis 2: when biased assimilation was minimized, participants could still demonstrate polarization regardless of the strength of their prior attitudes as long as the political principle associated with the arguments was salient. In general, results did not strongly support either hypothesis. After adjusting the research procedure, Hypothesis 1 was partially supported in Experiment 4 when attitude change was measured by attitude strength measurement. Experiment 3 reduced biased assimilation by using an academic topic and arguments. What's more, results showed that biased assimilation was present consistently but did not predict polarization; attitude strength measurement was sensitive to the affective dimension of the attitude change. The implication and direction for future studies were discussed. |
