Networks shape political attitude change

Abstract

Attitude change is not solely an individual process—it unfolds within social networks. While interventions to shift individuals’ political attitudes are widespread, from campaign persuasion to efforts reducing prejudice and partisan animosity, little is known about how such interventions depend on and interact with social structures. We report results from a field experiment in sixteen Ugandan villages that provides a rare, direct view of how attitude change occurs within social networks. We combine measures of village social networks with surveys of attitudes before and after a perspective-taking intervention seeking to warm attitudes toward nearby refugees. Targeted individuals did exhibit warmer attitudes toward refugees immediately after treatment on average. Two to three weeks later, however, substantial additional change had occurred throughout the villages—even among those never treated directly. We show evidence that these attitude shifts occurred within and because of social networks. Attitudes of network neighbors moved toward one another, even more than would be expected by common positive shifts. The new attitudes of targeted individuals spill over to influence the attitudes of network neighbors. Some people react to the intervention especially strongly right away; network distance to these people predicts longer-term attitude change, where attitudes of individuals closer to strong positive or negative reactors shift in the corresponding direction over time. These patterns do not predict immediate responses, only later ones after people have had time to interact with their network ties. Our findings demonstrate that political attitude change is ultimately shaped by real-world social networks.