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"Overcoming Resistance to Counter-Attitudinal Communication in the Classroom "
by April Kelley-Woessner
College students come from a variety of backgrounds, have different life experiences, and hold a wide range of views on contemporary issues. They have opinions of their own, some of which they hold with great conviction. While ideological diversity is certainly something to be valued in higher education, the clashing of ideas presents somewhat of a challenge to the college professor, who is responsible for facilitating meaningful, thoughtful discussion on highly charged issues.
John Stuart Mill (1848, 594) wrote, “It is hardly possible to overrate the value… of placing human beings in contact with persons dissimilar to themselves, and with modes of thought and action unlike those with which they are familiar… Such communication has always been… one of the primary sources of progress.” More recently, researchers offer empirical evidence for the benefits of communication across lines of philosophical difference. Exposure to people with dissonant viewpoints leads to recognition of legitimate disagreement and increased tolerance for others (Benhabib 1996; Mutz and Mondak 2006; Price, Cappella and Nir 2002). Exposure to dissimilar views may also lead to greater cognitive deliberation, deeper reflection on one’s own views, and greater confidence in ones’ ability to participate in the political process (McLeod, Scheufele, Moy, Horowitz, et al. 1999, Sotirovic and McLeod 2001).
While exposure to disagreement may be the cure for intolerance and other social ills, the pill may be a difficult one to swallow for some individuals. People are not merely sponges who absorb information freely. Rather, they are subject to a number of cognitive biases, based on their motivation to maintain existing beliefs. According to Campbell, Converse, Miller and Stokes (1960, 133 ), “identification with a party raises a perceptual screen through which the individual tends to see what is favorable to his partisan orientation.” People prefer information that confirms pre-existing viewpoints and subject information that challenges their viewpoints to a higher level of scrutiny (Ditto and Lopez 1992; Edwards and Smith 1996; Lord, Ross and Lepper 1979).
In the classroom setting, such resistance to counter-attitudinal information threatens to undermine the learning process. Students who have strong political views may simply tune out information from professors and classmates who offer conflicting viewpoints. This is, in and of itself, cause for concern. However, students’ reactions to disagreement may have consequences beyond this as well. According to social accountability theory, people withdraw from politics in order to avoid conflict (Mutz 2002). While there has been little research, to date, on social accountability pressures in an educational setting, there is reason to believe this theory may be especially relevant in the classroom. College students, more so than other groups of people, exhibit a great need for social acceptance (Sears 1986). Accordingly, college students may avoid political discussion for fear of alienating peers and professors. This is especially likely of students who perceive their political positions to be in the minority, or of students who are particularly conflict-averse.
Arguably, one of the primary goals of higher education is to expose students to new ideas and to encourage them to think critically about competing perspectives. Yet the desire to engage in critical, objective analysis, especially of one’s own views, is not a natural one for most human beings. Therefore, this motivation must be created, even if somewhat artificially, in the classroom setting. Professors can do this by appealing directly to students’ self-interest and awarding grades, which are perhaps students’ number one motivator, based on students’ abilities to contemplate and reflect on those arguments that the student would naturally resist or avoid.
For example, this past year, in my introductory American Government courses, I challenged students to consider a new perspective. On the first day of class, students complete a public opinion survey on a number of policy questions. I also ask them to circle the question that is most important to them. After they have completed the survey and made note of their response to the most important question, I tell them about the first assignment. They are to write a paper that makes the best argument possible for the opposing point of view. Students who support affirmative action must write a paper arguing against affirmative action. Students who are against gay marriage must write a paper supporting gay marriage. This requires students to seek out arguments that they would have naturally avoided. They also must articulate those arguments in a fair, compelling manner and must provide research evidence to support those arguments. I base their grades on their ability to make the best possible case for the point of view with which they disagree. After taking on the opposing point of view, students integrate the first paper into a longer paper that reconciles their own point of view with the arguments from the opposition. They must discuss the pros and cons of both sides and attempt to be objective when weighing evidence. In the end, they make an informed policy recommendation based on careful consideration of different perspectives and competing evidence.
In the past, I had merely assigned a one-step paper and had asked students to weigh the pros and cons of competing positions. However, I found that students inevitably paid less attention to arguments that refuted their own and were often unable to offer a fair portrayal of the opposition. The division of the paper eliminates this problem by requiring students to focus only on one side of the argument in the first half of the assignment, which is the basis for half of their grade on the completed project.
After completing the assignment, I asked my students to complete a brief questionnaire about their experiences. The large majority of the students agreed with the statement, “as a result of completing the assignment, I heard arguments I had never heard before”. The fact that the majority of students respond affirmatively is impressive when we consider that students selected the issue that is most important to them and, hence, also most familiar to them. Perhaps more importantly, about one-third of the students reported that their position on the issue actually changed in the process of completing the assignment.
The above approach may be best suited for an introductory course with non-majors. Many of these students have little initial interest in the political process. Therefore, if it is true that students wish to avoid conflict, classroom debates about controversial topics may threaten to cause even greater disinterest. The written assignment exposes students to new perspectives and encourages critical reflection on their own beliefs, without forcing them to publicly defend positions or directly confront political adversaries. The direct conflict approach may be more appropriate in upper-level courses, where students have self-selected into fields that deal with controversial issues. Although the ability to engage in public debate is a valuable skill and one that we should strive to teach to our students, they may not be equipped to deal with this sort of confrontation early in their college careers. First, we must encourage a general interest in public debate by exposing students to new ideas and encouraging them, or even requiring them, to recognize legitimate disagreement. The challenge for educators is to develop creative ways to expose students to new ideas in a non-threatening manner, such that ego defense does not overshadow thoughtful analysis of the issue.
April Kelly-Woessner is an Assistant Professor of Political Science, Elizabethtown College
REFERENCES
Benhabib, Seyla. 1996. Democracy and Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Campbell, Angus, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller, and Donald E. Stokes. 1960. The American Voter. New York: Wiley.
Ditto, Peter H. and David F. Lopez. 1992. “Motivated Skepticism: Use of Differential Decision Criteria for Preferred and Nonpreferred Conclusions.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 44:20-33.
Edwards, Kari and Edward E. Smith. 1996. “A Disconfirmation Bias in the Evaluation of Arguments.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 71:5-24.
Lord, Charles G, Lee Ross, and Mark R. Lepper. 1979. “Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization: The Effects of Prior Theories on Subsequently Considered Evidence.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37:2098-2109.
McLeod, Jack M., Dietram A. Scheufele, Patricia Moy, Edward M. Horowitz, R. Lance Holbert, Weiwu Zhang, Stephen Zubric, and Jessica Zubric. 1999. “Understanding Deliberation: The Effects of Discussion Networks on Participation in a Public Forum.” Communication Research 26:743-774.
Mill, John Stuart. 1848. Principles of Political Economy. Boston.
Mutz, Diana. 2002. “The Consequences of Cross-Cutting Networks for Political Participation.” American Journal of Political Science 46:838-855.
Mutz, Diana, and Jeffery Mondak. 2006. “The Workplace as a Context for Cross-Cutting Political Discourse. The Journal of Politics 68 (1):140-155.
Price, Vincent, Joseph N. Cappella, and Lilach Nir. 2002. “Does Disagreement Contribute to More Deliberative Opinion?” Political Communication 19:95-112.
Sotirovic, Mira, and Jack M. McLeod. 2001. “Values, Communication Behavior, and Political Participation.” Political Communication 18:273-300.
Sears, David O. 1986. “College Sophomores in the Laboratory: Influences of a Narrow Data Base on Social Psychology’s View of Human Nature.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 51 (3):515-530.
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