Do you talk about politics with the same number of people as you did, say, 25 years ago? Fewer? More? And what political views do those people have? Similar to yours? Different?
When we think about people’s personal political networks, there are two common concerns. One is that people just don’t talk politics – that is, they’re unengaged. The other is what’s known as homophily: We talk mostly to people who agree with us. Birds of a feather, and all that.
Political scientist Diana Mutz has new research that examines whether both concerns have become more pressing. She does this by leveraging 1996 and 2020 surveys that ask Americans an identical battery of questions about their political discussion networks. People could name up to three people they discuss politics with and then report on those people’s political views.
Here’s what she found. First, the size of people’s political networks actually grew – from an average of 1.66 to 2.01 discussants. One possible explanation is that, as of 2020, people were more politically engaged than they were 25 years ago. It’s hard to remember, but the 1990s were an era of the “disappearing American voter.” But by 2020, voter turnout was up, as were other measures of engagement in politics. So, it’s not surprising that the average American was talking politics with more people.
Second, most of the increase came from like-minded discussants. The graph below shows this. Notably, the number of opposite-minded discussants (red line) did not decrease. If anything, it increased slightly. But the number of like-minded discussants (green line) increased a lot more. Mutz constructs an index to capture how much “cross-cutting” discussion there is, on average (the black line). The decrease between 1996 and 2020 shows that political discussion networks involve fewer conversations across party lines.
Here’s how she sums it up: “As politics becomes more salient, and political discussion increases, like-minded discussants increasingly dominate people’s networks, and oppositional discussion becomes a less substantial proportion of the network.”
In Mutz’s previous work, she has shown that cross-cutting discussion is a mixed blessing. If we want people to participate in politics, it’s like-minded discussions that are actually more helpful. Mutz writes, “When surrounded by like-minded others, people’s views are continually reinforced and they are spurred on to take political action.” That was true in both 1996 and 2020: A more like-minded network was positively correlated with voter turnout.
But cross-cutting networks are good for increasing political tolerance, because we relate to and learn from people with different political views.
Given the changes in people’s networks between 1996 and 2020, it makes sense that participation was up. But was political tolerance down? Mutz finds that it was – by a small, but statistically significant, amount. (Tolerance was measured by asking people to choose their most-disliked group from a list – including some generally disliked groups like the KKK – and then asking whether they would extend civil liberties to this group, such as the freedom to give a speech in their community.)
Furthermore, political tolerance was more strongly predicted by the number of like-minded discussants, not the number of opposite-minded discussants. In other words, the more you talk to people who agree with you, the harder it becomes to countenance civil liberties for a group you dislike.
This decline in political tolerance goes hand in hand with another trend: less understanding of the rationales for different political points of view. Specifically, Mutz asks people to give reasons for supporting their party’s presidential candidate and the other party’s candidate. Compared to 1996, people in 2020 were more likely to give reasons for supporting their own side and less likely to see reasons for supporting the other side.
Ultimately, these results draw fresh attention to the tensions in the typical conception of the ideal citizen. We want that citizen to care about politics and participate in politics, but also be engaged with a diverse group of people and tolerant of views they strongly disagree with. But of course, part of what makes us want to participate in politics is that we have strong views ourselves and, frankly, want our side to win out over those we disagree with.
It would be nice to have citizens who are both engaged and tolerant, to be sure. But in reality, those characteristics may not go together so easily.
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