Politically Motivated Reinforcement Seeking: Reframing the Selective Exposure Debate

2009/12/01 by R. Kelly Garrett, R. Garrett · 718 citations
Computer Science · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Cognitive reframing #Computer science #Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection #Media Studies and Communication #Media studies #Political science #Psychology #Reinforcement #Social Media and Politics #Social psychology #Sociology #State (computer science)

paper · doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2009.01452.x

published in Journal of Communication 59(4), 676-699 (Oxford University Press)

openalex publication_date 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

This article seeks to reframe the selective exposure debate by demonstrating that people exhibit a preference for opinion-reinforcing political information without systematically avoiding opinion challenges. The results are based on data collected in a national random-digit-dial telephone survey (n = 1,510) conducted prior to the 2004 U.S. presidential election. Analyses show that Americans use the control afforded by online information sources to increase their exposure to opinions consistent with their own views without sacrificing contact with other opinions. This observation contradicts the common assumption that reinforcement seeking and challenge avoidance are intrinsically linked aspects of the selective exposure phenomenon. This distinction is important because the consequences of challenge avoidance are significantly more harmful to democratic deliberation than those of reinforcement seeking.

Cited by

• Polarization and Partisan Selective Exposure
• The Dynamics of Audience Fragmentation: Public Attention in an Age of Digital Media
• It matters how you google it? Using agent-based testing to assess the impact of user choices in search queries and algorithmic personalization on political Google Search results
• Media stereotypes, prejudice, and preference-based reinforcement: toward the dynamic of self-reinforcing effects by integrating audience selectivity
• What do Israeli children and adults want to know about in- and out-group members?
• The Hostile Audience: The Effect of Access to Broadband Internet on Partisan Affect
• Selective Exposure in the Age of Social Media
• Confirmation Bias, Ingroup Bias, and Negativity Bias in Selective Exposure to Political Information
• Political Homophily in a Large-Scale Online Communication Network
• Conceptualizing Echo Chambers and Information Cocoons: A Literature Review and Synthesis of Current Knowledge and Future Directions
• Scanning vs. Thorough Processing the News: Antecedents of First- and Second-Level Incidental Exposure and the Role of the Relevance Appraisal
• Curated Flows: A Framework for Mapping Media Exposure in the Digital Age
• Partisan Identification as a Predictor of Cortisol Response to Election News
• How do media contribute to the dissemination of conspiracy beliefs? A field study combining panel and web tracking at the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic
• The Emotional Dynamics of Partisan Media and Political Misperceptions
• Is Partisan Selective Exposure an American Peculiarity? A Comparative Study of News Browsing Behaviors in the United States, Japan, and Hong Kong
• Social Media, Network Heterogeneity, and Opinion Polarization
• Tweeting From Left to Right
• 「自由」なメディアの陥穽：有権者の選好に基づくもうひとつの選択的接触
• Effect of Media Environment Diversity and Advertising Tone on Information Search, Selective Exposure, and Affective Polarization
• The Relationship Between Social Media Use and Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories and Misinformation
• Events and Controversies: Influences of a Shocking News Event on Information Seeking
• Communicating with Algorithms: A Transfer Entropy Analysis of Emotions-based Escapes from Online Echo Chambers
• “THE RUSSIANS ARE HACKING MY BRAIN!” investigating Russia's internet research agency twitter tactics during the 2016 United States presidential campaign
• Hyperpartisan News Use: Relationships with Partisanship and Cognitive and Affective Involvement
• The Role and Impact of Fox News
• A critical review of filter bubbles and a comparison with selective exposure
• Bursting your (filter) bubble
• Politically Motivated Avoidance in Social Networks: A Study of Facebook and the 2020 Presidential Election
• #Scamdemic, #Plandemic, or #Scaredemic: What Parler Social Media Platform Tells Us about COVID-19 Vaccine
• Media Literacy Messages and Hostile Media Perceptions: Processing of Nonpartisan Versus Partisan Political Information
• Cognitive Discrepancy, Dissonance, and Selective Exposure
• Selective Exposure to Public Service News over Thirty Years: The Role of Ideological Leaning, Party Support, and Political Interest
• Topic Matters: How Linguistic Properties can Shape Reading Behaviour in Selective Exposure Studies
• A systematic review of echo chamber research: comparative analysis of conceptualizations, operationalizations, and varying outcomes
• Selective Exposure to Health Information: The Role of Headline Features in the Choice of Health Newsletter Articles. [europepmc]
• Just a Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Messages Go Down: Using Stories and Vicarious Self-Affirmation to Reduce e-Cigarette Use. [europepmc]
• Perceptions of newsworthiness are contaminated by a political usefulness bias. [europepmc]
• Directionality of information flow and echoes without chambers. [europepmc]
• Recursive patterns in online echo chambers. [europepmc]
• Selective exposure shapes the Facebook news diet. [europepmc]
• Assessment of Diagnosis and Triage in Validated Case Vignettes Among Nonphysicians Before and After Internet Search. [europepmc]
• #Scamdemic, #Plandemic, or #Scaredemic: What Parler Social Media Platform Tells Us about COVID-19 Vaccine. [europepmc]
• The polarized mind in context: Interdisciplinary approaches to the psychology of political polarization. [europepmc]
• The Relationship Between Social Media Use and Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories and Misinformation. [europepmc]
• News recommender system: a review of recent progress, challenges, and opportunities. [europepmc]
• On the relationship between conspiracy theory beliefs, misinformation, and vaccine hesitancy. [europepmc]
• A systematic review of worldwide causal and correlational evidence on digital media and democracy. [europepmc]
• Investigating the Heterogeneity of Misperceptions: A Latent Profile Analysis of COVID-19 Beliefs and Their Consequences for Information-Seeking. [europepmc]
• In-party love spreads more efficiently than out-party hate in online communities. [europepmc]
• The motivation and consequence of fact-checking behavior: An experimental study. [europepmc]
• Personality, Political Party Identification, and Partisan News Consumption: A Replication and Extension in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic [europepmc]

Related

• Reinforcement of the Political Self Through Selective Exposure to Political Messages
• Bridging the Divide? Reducing Hostility Without Increasing Acceptance: A Commentary on Moritz et al. (2026)
• Partisan Expressive Responding: Lessons from Two Decades of Research
• How the Politicization of Everyday Activities Affects the Public Sphere: The Effects of Partisan Stereotypes on Cross-Cutting Interactions
• Collaborative Registered Replication of Griskevicius et al. (2010): Can Pro-environmental Behavior Be Promoted by Priming Status Motivation?