QuoteProject
Groups become more extreme and entrenched in their beliefs and polarized from others when members only exchange information that reinforces their views and filter out all else or never learn of alternatives. Thus they narrow their options, and magnify each other's prejudices and misconceptions. This trend leads to blind spots in decision making and to extreme behavior, even terrorism.
Cass Sunstein
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Groups can become extreme in their beliefs when they only share information that confirms their views.

This quote by Cass Sunstein highlights the dangers of groupthink and echo chambers, where individuals are surrounded by like-minded opinions and exclude alternative perspectives. This lack of diversity in thought can lead to intensified biases, poor decision making, and even harmful behaviors, illustrating the importance of open dialogue and exposure to differing viewpoints in any group dynamic.

Themes

GroupthinkBiasEcho ChamberExtremismDecision Making

In practice

Example use cases

During a team meeting, I shared this quote to emphasize the importance of considering diverse viewpoints.

More from Cass Sunstein

By their innocence and goodness, by their boundless capacity for forgiveness, and by the sheer power of their faith and hope, children redeem their parents, bringing out their best selves.
Cass SunsteinRead
If a company has acted badly, people want to punish it - not in order to deter future misconduct, but simply because they're outraged. And the more outraged they are, the more punishment they want to inflict.
Cass SunsteinRead
If you look at a great city, one of its amazing features is that you're going to find all sorts of things that you might not specifically have chosen in advance. And they will change your day. Maybe your month. Maybe your whole life.
Cass SunsteinRead
It can be easy and tempting, especially during a presidential campaign, to listen only to opinions that mirror and fortify one's own. That's not ideal, because it eliminates learning and makes it impossible for people to understand what they dismiss as 'the other side.'
Cass SunsteinRead
Research shows that if people are talking and listening to like-minded others, they become more dogmatic, more unified, and more extreme. Personalized Facebook experiences are a breeding ground for misunderstanding and miscommunication across political lines and, ultimately, for extremism.
Cass SunsteinRead
If the air quality is terrible in Los Angeles, if a particular university is unusually expensive, if crime is on the rise in Dallas, or if a company has a lot of recalled toys, transparency can spur change. Whenever public or private institutions have to answer to the public, their performance is likely to improve.
Cass SunsteinRead

Similar quotes

We who defend Christianity find ourselves constantly opposed not by the irreligion of our headers but by their real religion.
C. S. LewisRead
So far as this argument is concerned nonhuman animals and infants and retarded humans are in the same category; and if we use this argument to justify experiments on nonhuman animals we have to ask ourselves whether we are also prepared to allow experiments on human infants and retarded adults; and if we make a distinction between animals and these humans, on what basis can we do it, other than a bare-faced - and morally indefensible - preference for members of our own species?
Peter SingerRead
Publicity is the life of this culture - in so far as without publicity capitalism could not survive - and at the same time publicity is its dream.
John BergerRead
Our culture peculiarly honors the act of blaming, which it takes as the sign of virtue and intellect.
Lionel TrillingRead
The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.
Carl JungRead
I daresay anything can be made holy by being sincerely worshipped.
Iris MurdochRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.

Quote by Cass Sunstein | QuoteProject