Confronting Core Issues: A Critical Assessment of Attitude Polarization Using Tailored Experiments

A long-standing debate in political psychology considers whether individuals update their beliefs and attitudes in the direction of evidence or grow more confident in their convictions when confronted with counter-attitudinal arguments. Though recent studies have shown that instances of the latter tendency, which scholars have termed attitude polarization and “belief backfire,” are rarely observed in settings involving hot-button issues or viral misinformation, we know surprisingly little about how participants respond to information targeting deeply held attitudes, a key condition for triggering attitude polarization. We develop a tailored experimental design that measures participants’ core issue positions and exposes them to personalized counter-attitudinal information using the large language model GPT-3. We find credible evidence of attitude polarization, but only when arguments are contentious and vitriolic. For lower valence counter-attitudinal arguments, attitude polarization is not detected. We conclude by discussing implications for the study of political cognition and the measurement of attitudes.