Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14850, USA.
Sci Adv. 2019 Aug 28;5(8):eaax0754. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aax0754. eCollection 2019 Aug.
"Culture wars" involve the puzzling alignment of partisan identity with disparate policy positions, lifestyle choices, and personal morality. Explanations point to ideological divisions, core values, moral emotions, and cognitive hardwiring. Two "multiple worlds" experiments ( = 4581) tested an alternative explanation based on the sensitivity of opinion cascades to the initial conditions. Consistent with recent studies, partisan divisions in the influence condition were much larger than in the control group (without influence). The surprise is that bigger divisions indicate less predictability. Emergent positions adopted by Republicans and opposed by Democrats in one experimental "world" had the opposite outcome in other parallel worlds. The unpredictability suggests that what appear to be deep-rooted partisan divisions in our own world may have arisen through a tipping process that might just as easily have tipped the other way. Public awareness of this counter-intuitive possibility has the potential to encourage greater tolerance for opposing opinions.
“文化战争”涉及党派身份与不同政策立场、生活方式选择和个人道德之间令人费解的一致。解释指向意识形态分歧、核心价值观、道德情感和认知硬件。两个“多个世界”实验（=4581）基于意见级联对初始条件的敏感性，测试了一个替代解释。与最近的研究一致，影响条件下的党派分歧比对照组（没有影响）大得多。令人惊讶的是，更大的分歧表明可预测性更低。在一个实验“世界”中共和党人采用并遭到民主党人反对的新兴立场在其他平行世界中则相反。这种不可预测性表明，在我们自己的世界中看似根深蒂固的党派分歧可能是通过一个 tipping 过程产生的，而这个 tipping 过程也可能很容易向另一个方向倾斜。公众对这种违反直觉的可能性的认识有可能鼓励人们对相反的意见持更大的宽容态度。
