Cited by 221Electoral Systems and Political ParticipationOpinion Dynamics and Social InfluenceSocial Media and Politics

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Pluralistic Collapse: The “Oil Spill” Model of Mass Opinion Polarization

DellaPosta, Daniel·2020·American Sociological Review

DOI 10.1177/0003122420922989

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Abstract

Despite widespread feeling that public opinion in the United States has become dramatically polarized along political lines, empirical support for such a pattern is surprisingly elusive. Reporting little evidence of mass polarization, previous studies assume polarization is evidenced via the amplification of existing political alignments. This article considers a different pathway: polarization occurring via social, cultural, and political alignments coming to encompass an increasingly diverse array of opinions and attitudes. The study uses 44 years of data from the General Social Survey representing opinions and attitudes across a wide array of domains as elements in an evolving belief network. Analyses of this network produce evidence that mass polarization has increased via a process of belief consolidation, entailing the collapse of previously cross-cutting alignments, thus creating increasingly broad and encompassing clusters organized around cohesive packages of beliefs. Further, the increasing salience of political ideology and partisanship only partly explains this trend. The structure of U.S. opinion has shifted in ways suggesting troubling implications for proponents of political and social pluralism.

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“…as well as the adoption of external information in the face of the influence of information such as mainstream media propaganda, in order to study the individuals within the real community The process of being influenced by public opinion propaganda under the influence of external information [12].”
Complements and competitors: Examining technological co-diffusion and relatedness on a collaborative coding platform
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“Although the differences may be most pronounced when it comes to bioethics, spillover effects and attitudinal diffusion suggest that these patterns may extend to areas of science that are not morally significant (DellaPosta 2020; Roos 2017).”
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“3 Modularity is commonly used to measure the extent to which members of a group favor connections to fellow group members (e.g., co-partisans) above what would be expected by random chance based on the observed degree distribution (e.g., DellaPosta 2020).”
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Konechni, B. A. (2026) · American Sociological Review · doi:10.1177/00031224251415372
“…was indicative of a preexisting medical and institutional distrust (Cole, Schofer, and Velasco 2023; Zapp 2022)—a self-sorting into partisan groups and like-minded communities (Bonikowski, Feinstein, and Bock 2021; DellaPosta 2020; Estep and Greenberg 2020)—my findings suggest the opposite.”

Authors: DellaPosta, D.
Affiliations: Pennsylvania State University (US)
Corresponding author: DellaPosta, Daniel
ORCID: DellaPosta, Daniel
Venue: American Sociological Review
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Published: 2020-06
Volume: 85
Issue: 3
Pages: 507-536
ISSN: 0003-1224 (ISSN-L)
1939-8271
DOI: 10.1177/0003122420922989
OpenAlex: W3034108861
Semantic Scholar: 866357ade0b940c5aa010a94bd27d7287d4132a0
Cited by: 219
References: 113
Citations by year: 2026: 31 · 2025: 53 · 2024: 46 · 2023: 27 · 2022: 32 · 2021: 20 · 2020: 9
FWCI: 76.65
Type: journal article
Language: en
Open access: closed
Licence: journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
Locations: American Sociological Review (publishedVersion)
Topics: Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence
Social Sciences › Communication › Social Media and Politics
Keywords: Bayesian networks, political ideology, partisanship, pluralism, opinion change, General Social Survey

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Pluralistic Collapse: The “Oil Spill” Model of Mass Opinion Polarization

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