Social Polarization and its effects in society

     During week 10 of my neuroscience seminar class, we learned from Dr. Grzywacz about what causes people to form their values and how social polarization develops.  He summed up his findings from his article, " Comparison of distance and reinforcement-learning rules in social-influences models", explains how people's values polarize and cluster through reinforcement learning, distance-based influence, and polarization. The research highlights three main findings that help explain grouping: people move closer to others who share their values, move away from those with opposing values, and both people and AI systems learn through rewards. The study demonstrates the internal mechanism behind how individuals form social groups and become polarized in their beliefs.

    The 2025 article," Higher Education is Becoming more politically polarized" by Riley Acton, Emily Cook, and Paola Ugalde, talks about the same processes in the real world. It analyzes how first-year students select their colleges and how their political views influence their decisions in American society. The article addresses the influence of politics and how it shapes American society. They did a survey-based experiment to analyze polarization trends. Results showed that colleges were becoming ideologically extreme. For example, liberal colleges were becoming more liberal and conservative colleges more conservative. Students were willing to pay $2000-3000 more per year to avoid campuses with many students with opposing political views. Overall, students preferred colleges where they were politically aligned.

    Ultimately, both articles show polarization reinforces itself. Dr. Grywacz's model explains the cognitive mechanisms driving individuals toward like-minded groups who share their values and distance themselves from those who do not, reinforcing a group identity over time. The Higher Education article demonstrates this same mechanism at societal level: students seeking politically aligning college environments and avoiding ones that do not align with their beliefs, reinforcing institutional polarization. Together, these studies demonstrate polarization is both a psychological and social process, that shapes where people live, learn, and interact. Lastly, it highlights the challenge of promoting exposure diverse viewpoints in society.

Acton, R., Cook, E., & Ugalde, P. (2025, December 4). Higher education is becoming more politically polarized. ProMarket. https://www.promarket.org/2025/12/10/higher-education-is-becoming-more-politically-polarized/

Grzywacz, N. M. (2025). Comparison of distance and reinforcement-learning rules in social-influence models. Neurocomputing, 649, 130870.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2025.130870