This research looks at partisanship as a kind of community signal. When a label is described as widely used by one’s own political group, people find an otherwise circular explanation more informative. When the same label is described as belonging to the rival political group, it loses some persuasive force, though it still counts for more than a label with no social backing. The pattern breaks down for groups that lack credibility; labels tied to an epistemically suspect community do not boost perceived informativeness.
Understanding these effects matters for anyone trying to communicate across divides or to build inclusive learning environments. If perceived entrenchment shapes judgment, then the social origin of terms can either open doors or reinforce echo chambers. Follow the full article to explore how these dynamics connect to how knowledge spreads and how we might design conversations that strengthen understanding rather than entrench misunderstanding.
Abstract
Categorical explanations involve the use of labels to account for various properties of the explanandum. Prior research shows that the degree to which a label is perceived to be entrenched in society impacts the judged quality of the categorical explanation that invokes it regardless of how informative the explanation actually is. The aim of the present paper is to investigate whether the label entrenchment effect persists even when the label is said to be entrenched only in a particular community (rather than in society at large) and whether one’s relationship to the entrenching community mediates the effect. Across five online behavioral experiments, we show that US partisans (Democrats and Republicans) rated the informativeness of a circular categorical explanation as higher when the label it invokes is entrenched in their own political community than when it is entrenched in the rival political community. However, being entrenched in the rival political community led to higher informativeness judgments than not being entrenched at all. Finally, we show that the effect does not occur when the label is entrenched in an epistemically suspect community, the Flat Earth Society.
