Opinions on the Internet: Social Influence and Political Decision Making Processes on Social Media

OSU Political Science Research Process AwardMuch scholarship has been produced to explain how one’s social identity affects political attitudes and behaviors (Phillips and Carsey, 2013). The majority of this scholarship has focused on heuristics and the party identification model to explain how people form political identities and make political decisions (Scholz and Pinney, 1995; Carmines and Huckfeldt, 1996, Mondak, 1993; Greene, 1999; Iyengar, Sood and Lelkes, 2012). But this scholarship fails to recognize that as society begins to interact more digitally through social media, acquisition of information becomes a social activity (Baek et al., 2012). This study focuses on the impact of social influence on political decision making. This study’s primary goal was to demonstrate that decisions compelled by psychological discomfort brought on by social influence motives can cause an individual to compromise politically to ease their cognitive burden. Social networking sites provide a particular setting of interest for this experiment, in that, individuals are more likely to talk about politics through an online format than through face-to-face interactions (Baek et al., 2012). The experimental design simulated an online social media environment, placing participants under a psychological strain between belonging and being distinct. This is intended to replicate the complex social reality that social media users experience on such platforms as Facebook. The results of this experiment suggest that individuals are significantly likely to conform to digital peer groups when discussing some political topics, while many moderate views disappeared, leading to a more polarized political environment.Decision Sciences CollaborativeNo embargoAcademic Major: Political Scienc