Group Polarization in Disciplinary Panel’s Decisions Among Teachers: An Analysis of Schools’ Affiliation Differences

The study examined group polarization in decision-making among teacher-members of disciplinary panels based on secondary school affiliations in Kenya. The pre-post with Nonequivalent Control Group design was used. A sample size comprised of 78 teacher-members of disciplinary panels in 10 secondary schools. Group polarization was measured with decision tasks from the Modified Choice Dilemma Questionnaire (Kogan & Wallach, 1964). A multivariate test was used to analyze the data. Findings indicated significant differences in group polarization in decisions among teachers on the bases of school affiliations were reported on the effect of behaviour problem regarding disciplinary tone. This finding implied that school affiliations play an important role in management of students’ behavior problems. The study recommended that schools should provide training for school disciplinary panel members before they take up their roles in student behavior management.

Group Polarization Based on Agent Emotional Characteristics and Credibility

The frequent occurrence of group polarization in many internet mass incidents produces adverse impacts on the social stability and poses a significant challenge for social management. We construct an opinion evolution model with agent emotional characteristics and credibility based on the Deffuant model to study the evolutionary mechanism of group polarization, which connects the agent’s firmness with the agent’s opinion, taking a full account of the agent heterogeneity. We analyze the impacts of initial opinion distribution, network structure, and opinion leader on the group opinion evolution. The results show that group polarization is easier to form when the initial opinions are in a normal distribution, and group polarization will also form under the impact of initial minority agents with extreme opinions. Different network structures will pose different effects on the group opinion evolution, and group polarization is easier to form in the small-world network and BA scale-free network. In addition, opinion leader also affects the group opinion evolution, and it will hinder the generation of group polarization.

“After the Discussion, I am Even More Confident in My Point of View”: An Overview of Studies of Group Polarization

The polarization of the population in Russia is reflected in the psychological state of society. The article deals with the phenomenon of “group polarization”. First, we define the phenomenon formulated in the framework of social psychology. Next, we presented the main theories that explain the mechanism of action of this phenomenon. Further, we considered in more detail psychological experiments aimed to study group polarization empirically. Separately, we considered studies that also established the features of group polarization, but were carried out in related social sciences. The examples of recent events that took place in Russia illustrate the process of group polarization in modern society in the period from 2014 to 2020. Based on the described studies, we formulated the need for a more detailed empirical analysis of this phenomenon in the current conditions of society in Russia. Finally, we outlined the main ways related to the study of the connection between group polarization and the psychological state of society and people’s behaviour.

Group Epistemology and Structural Factors in Online Group Polarization

There have been many discussions recently from philosophers, cognitive scientists, and psychologists about group polarization, with online and social media environments in particular receiving a lot of attention, both because of people's increasing reliance on such environments for receiving and exchanging information and because such environments often allow individuals to selectively interact with those who are like-minded. My goal here is to argue that the group epistemologist can facilitate understanding the kinds of factors that drive group polarization in a way that has been overlooked by the existing research. Specifically, I argue that polarization can occur in part because of the ways that members of a group treat the group itself (as opposed to an individual member within that group) as a source of information, and in doing so makes their own position, as well as that of the group, more extreme. I refer to this as a structural factor in driving polarization, and argue that such factors can contribute to explanations of polarization that occurs specifically in an important subset of groups, namely online and social media groups in which little is known about other members within the group, what I refer to as anonymous, semi-anonymous and pseudonymous (ASAP) groups.