Jungbin Lim

Presentation Title

Framing the Facts: How Communication Goals Shape the Framing of Statistical Information in Intergroup Contexts  

Abstract

Political disagreement often persists even when individuals have access to the same underlying data. The present research examines whether communication goals shape how people select among mathematically compatible statistical representations of shared information in intergroup contexts. We propose that communicative context activates distinct motivations. Communicating with an ingroup may motivate clarifying group boundaries, whereas communicating with an outgroup may motivate establishing common ground. To test this, participants evaluated public opinion statistics that could be expressed in alternative ways, either by describing the party composition of those holding a position, which highlights partisan difference, or by describing how common that position is within each party, which highlights partisan similarity. Consistent with predictions, participants imagining communication with a political outgroup were more likely to select similarity framings than those imagining communication with an ingroup. In the absence of an explicit communication goal, participants showed a tendency toward different framings. How individuals select among different valid representations of the same data may contribute to perceptions of political polarization.