Must We Talk? - New York Times

Must We Talk? - New York Times: "Consider an experiment last year, when groups of Coloradans convened separately in Boulder and Colorado Springs to discuss global warming, affirmative action and civil unions for same-sex couples. Before the discussions, the people in Boulder were on average more liberal than the ones in Colorado Springs, but there were also moderates in both places whose opinions overlapped.

After the group discussions, the people in Boulder moved to the left, and those in Colorado Springs moved to the right. The researchers — David Schkade, Cass Sunstein and Reid Hastie — concluded that “the major effect of deliberation was to make group members more extreme than they were before they started to talk.”

This effect hasn’t been studied much in politics, but it’s well documented in other arenas. When jurors deliberate how much to award in damages, they often end up giving more than the average juror originally thought was fair — and sometimes more than anyone in the group originally favored. The more they talk, the more they reinforce one another’s indignation."