Junior Research Group "Digital Citizenship in Network Technologies", University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany.
Media Psychology, University of Koblenz-Landau, Landau, Germany.
PLoS One. 2021 Jan 11;16(1):e0243049. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0243049. eCollection 2021.
Political disagreements in social media can result in removing (i.e., "unfriending") a person from one's online network. Given that such actions could lead to the (ideological) homogenization of networks, it is pivotal to understand the psychological processes intertwined in unfriending decisions. This requires not only addressing different types of disagreements but also analyzing them in the relational context they occur. This article proposes that political disagreements leading to drastic measures such as unfriending are attributable to more deeply rooted moral dissents. Based on moral foundations theory and relationship regulation research, this work presents empirical evidence from two experiments. In both studies, subjects rated political statements (that violated different moral foundations) with regard to perceived reprehensibility and the likelihood of unfriending the source. Study 1 (N = 721) revealed that moral judgments of a political statement are moderately related to the unfriending decision. Study 2 (N = 822) replicated this finding but indicated that unfriending is less likely when the source of the morally reprehensible statement is relationally close to the unfriender and provides emotional support. This research extends unfriending literature by pointing to morality as a new dimension of analysis and offers initial evidence uncovering the psychological trade-off behind the decision of terminating digital ties. Drawing on this, our findings inform research on the homogenization of online networks by indicating that selective avoidance (in the form of politically motivated unfriending) is conditional upon the relational context and the interpersonal benefits individuals receive therein.
社交媒体中的政治分歧可能导致人们从自己的在线网络中删除（即“删除好友”）某人。鉴于此类行为可能导致网络的（意识形态）同质化，因此了解删除好友决策中相互交织的心理过程至关重要。这不仅需要解决不同类型的分歧，还需要在它们发生的关系背景下进行分析。本文提出，导致删除好友等激烈措施的政治分歧归因于更深层次的道德分歧。基于道德基础理论和关系调节研究，这项工作从两项实验中提供了实证证据。在这两项研究中，被试者根据感知的可谴责性和删除好友的可能性，对涉及不同道德基础的政治言论进行评分。研究 1（N = 721）表明，政治言论的道德判断与删除好友的决定中度相关。研究 2（N = 822）复制了这一发现，但表明当道德上可谴责的言论来源与删除好友者关系密切并提供情感支持时，删除好友的可能性较小。这项研究通过将道德作为一个新的分析维度扩展了删除好友的文献，并提供了初步证据，揭示了终止数字联系决策背后的心理权衡。在此基础上，我们的研究结果通过表明有选择性的回避（以出于政治动机的删除好友的形式）取决于关系背景和个人从中获得的人际利益，为在线网络同质化的研究提供了信息。
