CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 97Opinion Dynamics and Social InfluenceSocial and Intergroup PsychologyPsychology of Social Influence

Discrepancy and Disliking Do Not Induce Negative Opinion Shifts

Open access
Takács, Károly, Flache, Andreas, Mäs, Michael·2016·PLOS ONE
DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0157948PMC PMC4917087
Open this paper in CoChat — free accountOpen PDF

Abstract

Both classical social psychological theories and recent formal models of opinion differentiation and bi-polarization assign a prominent role to negative social influence. Negative influence is defined as shifts away from the opinion of others and hypothesized to be induced by discrepancy with or disliking of the source of influence. There is strong empirical support for the presence of positive social influence (a shift towards the opinion of others), but evidence that large opinion differences or disliking could trigger negative shifts is mixed. We examine positive and negative influence with controlled exposure to opinions of other individuals in one experiment and with opinion exchange in another study. Results confirm that similarities induce attraction, but results do not support that discrepancy or disliking entails negative influence. Instead, our findings suggest a robust positive linear relationship between opinion distance and opinion shifts.

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1371/journal.pone.0157948

Cites

111 of 111 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Claims the paper makes

The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.

Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.

A few free checks a day · papers already verified open instantly · results are public

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • The negative influence/backfire effect is elusive, with limited relevance for politics outside the laboratory; while we may be less influenced by political opponents, we are unlikely to be negatively influenced by them.

    “This has brought researchers to conclude that negative influence effect is elusive, with limited relevance for politics outside the laboratory (88, 90, 93–95): while we may be less influenced by our political opponents, we are unlikely to be negatively influenced by them.”

    From How digital media drive affective polarization through partisan sorting (2022) · cites this paper as [95]

    The Summary and Conclusion reports no support for negative opinion shifts in the authors’ controlled experiments. It does not establish that the effect has limited relevance to politics outside the laboratory: the authors explicitly say they cannot exclude negative influence in field settings, and they did not study political opponents as such. (LLM, conf=0.86)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

Self-check

Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.

The self-check needs the paper’s full text.

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

6 of the 117 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 3

  1. [2]Katz E, Lazarsfeld PF. Personal influence. Glencoe: Free Press; 1955.
  2. [95]Hovland CI, Rosenberg MJ. Summary and further theoretical issues In: Rosenberg MJ, Hovland CI, McGuire WJ, Abelson RP, Brehm JW, editors. Attitude organization and change. New Haven: Yale University Press; 1960.
  3. [97]Rosenberg MJ. An analysis of affective-cognitive consistency In: Rosenberg MJ, Hovland CI, McGuire WJ, Abelson RP, Brehm JW, editors. Attitude organization and change. New Haven: Yale University Press; 1960.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Takács, K., Flache, A., & Mäs, M.
Affiliations
  • Centre for Social Sciences (HU)
  • University of Groningen (NL)
Corresponding author
Takács, Károly
ORCID
Venue
PLOS ONE
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Published
2016-06-22
Volume
11
Issue
6
Pages
e0157948
ISSN
1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0157948
PMC
PMC4917087
OpenAlex
W2125782352
Cited by
97
References
117
Citations by year
2026: 6 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 8 · 2023: 14 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 12 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 2 · 2015: 2
FWCI
4.34
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Repository of the Academy's Library (Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences) (acceptedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • University of Groningen research database (University of Groningen / Centre for Information Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • University of Groningen research database (University of Groningen / Centre for Information Technology) (submittedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University)
Funders
  • Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (VIDI Grant 452-04-351)
  • Magyar Tudományos Akadémia (Lendület Program)
  • Országos Tudományos Kutatási Alapprogramok (K112929)
  • European Research Council (648693)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Statistical and Nonlinear Physics › Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social and Intergroup Psychology
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Psychology of Social Influence
Keywords
bipolarization, opinion similarity, social influence, opinion exchange
MeSH terms
Attitude, Humans, Models, Theoretical, Public Opinion

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review