Collaborative Research on Political Discussion in the Workplace: Causes and Consequences of Cross-Cutting Political Dialogue

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Political dialogue with non-like-minded others is an essential component of a health, functioning public pshere. Unfortunately, research suggests that people in the United States may be segregated increasingly from those with views which differ from their own, and thus political communication across lines of difference is more and more unlikely in people's day-to-day lives. Residential patterns have moved toward spatially segregated living. In addition to structural trends, exposure to dissimilar views is inhibited by the well-known tendency for people to select politically like-minded discussion partners. Strong ties and frequent interpersonal contact tend to occur within the context of homogeneous interactions, thus limiting the extent to which these contacts bring new views to people's attention. Based on evidence from secondary analyses of four independent surveys, we demonstrate that the workplace is a key context in which political dialogue regularly crosses lines of difference, and thus it constitutes a venue with tremendous potential to influence political attitudes. In order to understand better the current and potential future contributions of the workplace, our project is designed explicitly to study workplace networks of informal political communication. The project promises both theoretically interesting insights on contemporary concerns surrounding the prospects for a public sphere, and practical insights into how the workplace might be utilized better as a context for promoting the goals of both broader and deper public discourse. Our research questions are organized around three broad concerns: (1) What individual and environmental factors facilitate explosure to cross-cutting political views? (2) What are the consequences of cross-cutting political discussion? We examine a variety of specific outcomes that have been posited to result from exposure to diverse views. They include persuasion from one political viewpoint to another; greater awareness of rationales for opposing viewpoints on various issues, and the political tolerance that may flow from such awareness; a deeper understanding of the rationale for one's own political views; alterations in levels of political engagement; and the degree of social trust. (3) What role does the workplace play as a mediating structure in the political life of ordinary Americans? Our study makes uses of three different approaches to examine the contributions of the workplace toward cross-cutting political dialogue. First, we use several existing data sets that tap general networks of political communication in order to examine the ways in which discussants encountered through the workplace differ from those encountered in other venues. Second, since these previous network studies have been designed explicity to study residential social contexts, we plan to conduct a national survey of working Americans that focuses specifically on workplace networks of political discussion. Finally, we plan to conduct more intensive interviews with respondents in each of four different workplaces and five different work units within each of these workplaces for a total of 20 work units. In addition to studying a small number of workplaces in greater depth, the major advantage of this design component is that aggregate measures can be used as independent variables to explain variance in the nature of individual dyads. Beyond this, the contextual data and the dyad-level data can be used as independent variables to explain individual-level attitudes and behaviors. In other words, analyses can be performed across levels and units to draw stronger conclusions about who influences whom.