Reading # 3 'Values, Beliefs & Group Influence

March 8, 2022

Values, Beliefs and Group In uence

Reading #3 for Online Course for Facilitators

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rom historic cultural elements of religion expressed in politics (an American universal given when it comes to group a liation), Americans have continued to polarize into groups based upon ideological ties to cultural issues. Those who hold progressive views and those with conservative cultural views cluster, and each is attracted to political “homes” where they feel culturally most comfortable.

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ven non-cultural issues such as taxes and government spending carry strong cultural overtones and an individual’s social values (which underlie his or her political a liation) predict what position she or he will take on any given issue. Individual identities are generally formed relative to a particular social context because “we are social beings through and through.”

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owever, it is often very di cult to discern from the available data just how institutional groups are representative of any particular individual, as individuals within wellde ned groups are considerably diverse. For example, a study by Pew Research Center shows that 50 percent of Evangelical Christians believe that the government should do more to protect morality, but ironically, 48 percent of Evangelicals want a smaller, less intrusive government.

The Chapel of the Good Shepherd also known as the Chapel in the Woods at Chautauqua.

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urther, 58 percent of those who belong to mainline churches believe that government is too involved in morality, but only 36 percent of them identify as politically conservative (those least likely to favor government intrusiveness). As seen in these examples, assumptions about an individual’s values and beliefs based on their group a liation can frequently be wrong because individuals don’t re ect all of the values of the group – rather, individuals re ect only selected values.

It remains, however, that group behavior does have a strong in uence on individual behavior.

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n individual’s stance on a particular issue is reinforced when he or she learns that others also share the same position. For example, studies show that when deliberating in criminal cases, jurors express greater con dence in their judgments when they discover that their fellow jurors largely share their views. Furthermore,

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eyewitness con dence is dramatically enhanced if witnesses learn that another person corroborated their identi cation.

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ommunal reinforcement drives individual rationalization, making it easier to conclude that one’s beliefs are correct. Thus, individual conversations, either prior to or during group discussions, reveal information about another person’s position on the issues under consideration and may unduly in uence the group’s decisions.

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his behavior, known as assimilation bias, draws a listener closer to the speaker’s idea because the speaker’s comments are within the latitude of acceptance of the listener; whereby, the perceived consensus elevates con dence, supporting theories that demonstrate the magnitude of the in uence of those who surround us.

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Please continue this exploration by reading “Polarization: One Reason Groups Fail” from the Chicago Booth Review by Reid Hastie and Cass R. Sunstein which you can nd at the following website: https://www.chicagobooth.edu/ review/one-reason-groups-failpolarization Click on the above link.

Adapted from "Transformation Through Dialogue" by Roger Doebke

The third in a series of readings designed to start you thinking about various issues that press directly on how we can facilitate civil discourse.

Some additional sources used in the preparation of this paper are listed below: Roger Doebke

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Haidt, Jonathan. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. New York: Vintage Books, 2012.

Pew Research “Religion and Public Life Project,” accessed November 18, 2013, http://religions.pewforum.org/ comparisons# Baron, Robert S., Sieg I. Hoppe, Chuan Feng Kao, Bethany Brunsman, Barbara Linneweh, and Diane Rogers. "Social Corroboration and Opinion Extremity."

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 32, no. 6 (1996): 537-60 Gri n, Emory A. A First Look at Communication Theory. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2006

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