Group polarization effects have been demonstrated to exaggerate the inclinations of group members after a discussion. A military term for group polarization is "incestuous amplification".
Study of this effect shown that after participating in a discussion group, members tend to advocate more extreme positions and call for riskier courses of action than individuals whom did not participate in any such discussion. This phenomenon was originally coined risky shift but in recent years certain experimental conditions have been found that lead group discussion to inhibit risk; many now use choice shift as a replacement term for both effects.
In addition, attitudes such as racial and sexual prejudice tend to be reduced (for already low-prejudice individuals) and inflated (for already high-prejudice individuals) after group discussion.
Some studies have linked group polarization effects to the behaviors of trial juries. In different studies, mock jury members after deliberating favored either stronger or more lenient sentences than any individuals had held before discussion.
Moscovici, S., & Zavalloni, M. (1969). The group as a polarizer of attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology12, 125-135
Bray, R. M., & Noble, A. M. (1978). Authoritarianism and decisions of mock juries: Evidence of jury bias and group polarization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 1424-1430.
MacCoun, R. J.; Kerr, N. L. (1988). Asymmetric influence in mock jury deliberation: Jurors' bias for leniency. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54, 21-33.
Grouppolarization has been used to explain the decision-making of a jury, particularly when considering punitive damages in a civil trial.
The study of grouppolarization began with an unpublished 1961 Master’s thesis by MIT student James Stoner, who observed the so-called "risky shift", meaning that a group’s decisions are riskier than the average of the individual decisions of members before the group met.
As a mechanism for polarization, group discussion shifts the weight of evidence as each individual exposes their pro and con arguments, giving each other new arguments and increasing the stock of pro arguments in favor of the group tendency, and con arguments against the group tendency.
Group decision making is affected by how cohesive a group is, how directive its leader is, and ingroup pressures that can lead to self-censorship, or the tendency for people to refrain from expressing their true feelings or reservations in the face of apparent consensus on the part of the other group members.
Group discussion tends to create grouppolarization, whereby initial leanings in a risky direction tend to be made more risky by discussion and initial leanings in a conservative direction tend to be made more conservative.
Polarization is a particularly common outcome in homogeneous groups, something we noted may be a particular problem in the modern world, as people are likely to read newspapers and watch news programs that fit their preexisting views.
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