Is polarization less prevalent than perceived?

Koerber, Helena (2022) Is polarization less prevalent than perceived? Bachelor thesis, Psychology.

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Abstract

Over the past years, polarization has become a topic of interest and research has linked pernicious consequences to the perception of polarization. However, research regarding the accuracy of this perception is divided and scarce. We investigated whether polarization is less prevalent than perceived regarding COVID-19 vaccination passports in the UK. We defined Polarization as an opinion-based dividedness of society around which partisan groups form, allowing for the distinction of opinion differentiation (division in opinions) and structural differentiation (division in groups based on these opinions). While opinion differentiation still allows for discussion, structural differentiation leads to avoidance and decreased openness. We hypothesized that objective opinion polarization will be lower than subjective opinion polarization regarding COVID-19 vaccination passports. Furthermore, we hypothesize that British people will perceive themselves to be more open than the average British person regarding COVID-19 vaccination passports. We employed a paid online sample via the platform prolific and aimed for representativeness of the British population regarding age, gender, political orientation, and educational background (N=499). Furthermore, we made use of the Polarization Index by Koudenburg & Kashima (2021) to create a measure of polarization and used a Wilcoxon test and a repeated measure design to test our hypotheses. We found that while polarization appears to be more prevalent than perceived, this does not compromise our openness towards others holding dissimilar views. It is therefore important to correct biased perceptions of openness in order to prevent the negative consequences of perceived structural differentiation. Keywords: Polarization, COVID-19, opinion-based groups, openness

Item Type:	Thesis (Bachelor)
Supervisor name:	Koudenburg, N.
Degree programme:	Psychology
Differentiation route:	Applied Social Psychology (ASP) [Bachelor Psychology]
Date Deposited:	17 Mar 2022 07:22
Last Modified:	17 Mar 2022 07:22
URI:	http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/321

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