The DOI matches its Crossref record; 113 of the 113 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Pluralistic Collapse: The “Oil Spill” Model of Mass Opinion Polarization
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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“Here, I engage with the “oil spill” thesis, which suggests that popular culture and lifestyle choices have become increasingly embedded in political divisions (DellaPosta et al. 2015; DellaPosta 2020; Rawlings and Childress 2024).”
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Metadata
- 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
- 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
- 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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