“Synopsis of Big Sort: Bill Bishop claims that we are increasingly self-sorting ourselves into neighborhoods politically and only associating with like-minded political neighbors with all kinds of horrible consequences. Much of Bishop and Cushing’s evidence about the corrosive effect comes from psycho-sociological experiments like Asch’s where group pressure causes people to behave immorally (a la Lord of the Flies or the Stanford Prison Experiment), or to censure their own dissonant voice even when they originally believed those views to be correct. [Note: Fiorina has made quite a name for himself on how the political elites in America have become ever more polarized and the masses have over time sorted themselves out more reliably into political parties but the masses views’ have not become any more extreme, so obviously the Big Sort doesn’t square with his other research that uses ongoing surveys like the General Social Survey, the American National Election Studies, etc.] There is a wonderful cartoon that the New York Times did about the Big Sort.” -Social Capital Blog
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Scott Page Model Thinking MOOC Course
