Parallel Reinforcing Spirals of Selective Exposure and Defensive Avoidance?

The next ICA 2024 conference session starts with Haodong Liu, whose interest is in reinforcing spirals of media selectivity. There are various approaches to media selection, and the reinforcing spirals model suggests that over time suggests that selective media use reinforces users’ beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours.

This may involve selective exposure (choosing attitude-consonant media content) as well as defensive avoidance (selectively filtering out attitude-challenging sources and information) – and these are not necessarily inherently connected as a zero-sum game. The present study applies this to the coverage of climate change, where conservative media that challenge the accepted science on climate change can be seen as non-conforming.

The increase in attitude-consistent and decrease in attitude-challenging information must be measured as distinct variables, then; they cannot be regarded as two sides of the same coin. Similarly, they represent distinct psychological mechanisms: positive consequences from selective avoidance; the combatting of negative emotions through defensive avoidance. The net effect here might also be the maintenance of hostility against outgroups.

The present study approached defensive avoidance as having a direct effect, at least within a partisan media environment. This links with the parallel reinforcing spirals model, where selective exposure and defensive avoidance can have parallel effects on subsequent user attitudes, but do not necessarily work in unison. It applied this to the context of COVID-19 containment policies in Hong Kong, and positioned a ‘live with COVID’ attitude as the opinion-congruent perspective.

It studies this through a three-wave study of some 920 residents, testing their attitudes towards COVID-19 measures and their use of opinion-consistent and opinion-challenging media. The analysis found that the mediation effects were supported: selective exposure contributed in a very minor way, defensive avoidance more strongly to a reinforcement of pre-existing attitudes. Inertia of pre-existing attitudes remained most prominent as an explanation of attitudes by the end of the study, however.