Selective exposure: what it is and how it affects our way of thinking.

A psychological phenomenon that has to do with our way of selecting information.

The processes of communication and persuasion depend a lot on how and to what degree the message impacts the audience. One of the fundamental variables involved in this process is the exposure, voluntary or involuntary, of the receiver to the message.

Selective exposure can be defined as the cognitive process that makes us tend to seek out, accept and attend to messages that are consistent with our beliefs and attitudes, avoiding information that is not in line with our own. and attitudes, avoiding information that casts doubt on what they believe.

Below we will take a closer look at this particular form of cognitive bias, as well as reflect on whether this process has been strengthened today, at a time when new technologies have taken the information monopoly away from the big brands.

What is selective exposure?

The term selective exposure refers to the tendency of people to expose themselves to information, opinions or media that are ideologically aligned, or that offer a form of information delivery of which the person is a supporter. This information is selected in order to reinforce pre-existing viewsand with the intention of avoiding any information contradictory to one's own opinion or criticisms of it.

This idea is closely related to confirmation bias, which is essentially nothing more than seeking information that confirms one's position. According to this idea, when we are presented with certain information for the first time, we dissect it and establish how close or contrary it is to our way of seeing the world. We opt for that which has evidence favorable to what we think, omitting, ignoring or rejecting that which is unfavorable.

Selective exposure can be related to cognitive dissonance, a concept defined by Leon FestingerIt is the internal tension or disharmony in the system of ideas, beliefs, emotions and, in general, cognitions that a person perceives when he or she has two conflicting thoughts at the same time. The person, who will already have a predetermined position before a certain fact or opinion, will continue looking for information that does not make him/her doubt his/her pre-established opinion.

It should be said that if the messages are slightly discrepant with the individual's previous beliefs but appear to be interesting, novel or useful, it is likely that the person will voluntarily expose him/herself to them and attend to them. The more novel the message and the less commitment the receiver has with his or her attitudes about the subject matter, the more likely he or she is to be exposed to and accept the information..

The impact of new technologies

Before the Internet came into our lives, the media such as television channels, radio stations and newspapers were the vehicles through which the general public received information. People could let themselves be manipulated by what a media outlet said, reflect on what was said on a talk show, change channels or stations, or relativize what had been said. Since there was a limited choice of media, it was very difficult to find a radio program, television channel or newspaper whose ideology or way of seeing things coincided 100% with one's own vision.

Even so, there was always the option of watching certain media. Preferences ended up being imposed on a day-to-day basis, making each person more or less consciously select the media that he or she allowed to influence his or her opinion or, as is often the case, that were more or less in sync with what he or she had already thought beforehand. However, this scenario has weakened with the passage of time, being applicable only to older people whose main entertainment is analog.

Nowadays, the emergence of new technologies, brought about by the great irruption of the Internet, has meant that people have much more information at their fingertips, and, among all this information, it is to be expected that the Internet will be a source of information for all of us. and, among all this information, it is to be expected that there will be something that is extremely coincident with our point of view. As there are more social networks, digital newspapers, YouTube channels and similar platforms, people have a much wider range of information possibilities, allowing us to be more selective than ever.

This idea has been defended by many critics of the new technologies. Despite the fact that the supply of information is much greater and that, in principle, it would make it easier for us to expand our horizons, there are those who argue that this would actually make us focus even more on our own opinion, seek only related media and be more intolerant of opinions we do not share.

Far from broadening our perspective, the sheer amount of new media would make us take extreme refuge in the evidence confirming our way of seeing the world, now easily found by searching for our opinion and finding endless media that say exactly the same thing we think. We have more evidence than ever that we are right, and others are totally wrong.We have more evidence than ever that we are right, and the others are totally wrong or have not been well documented.

The power of a plurality of ideas

While it is true that we are better able to select information and have an easier time finding personalized content, there is a problem with thinking that selective exposure is stronger than ever: the assumption that people always have a preference for like-minded information. This is quite debatable, since, really, there are more than a few occasions when people are interested in points of view that are different from our own..

Research has been done on this phenomenon and it does not seem to occur as strongly as one might at first think. In fact, on more than one occasion people deliberately seek out information that is critical of what they think in order to profit from it in a utilitarian way.. For example, if we want to study a career and we had initially opted for psychology, in order to avoid enrolling in a career that we may not like in the end, we will look for opinions that criticize it with objective data, or that recommend other options.

It should also be said that the idea of selective exposure confers a kind of "superpower" on people: to be able to recognize ideologically related media the first time they watch them. the first time they watch them. It is normal that if we are veteran readers of a newspaper, blog or any other source of information for years we know, more or less, what ideology is behind it. On the other hand, if it is the first time we see them, we will not be able to identify their opinion or ideology as soon as we see them. We will need to be exposed a little more and even dig into other articles, videos or blog posts to get a more general overview.

With new technologies, it is much easier to be exposed to a wide repertoire of opinions, especially thanks to hyperlinks. It is very common for us to pay more attention to the title of an article than to the newspaper that publishes it, as long as that title hints at a position that is radically opposed to our own. Clicking and clicking, we end up far away from the first page we have visited, and along the way we have been exposed to the most varied information.

Another interesting aspect of the Internet is that media such as social networks expose their users to other points of view, especially because their own users discuss among themselves or make posts/threads commenting on a politically debatable topic. These posts end up being commented on by other users, supporters or opponents of what they say., supporters or opponents of what has been said in them, thus expanding a debate that, of course, could not have been possible if there had not been people who had been exposed to content they did not like and felt the need to make a criticism.

Bibliographical references:

• Moya, M. (1999): Persuasion and attitude change. In J.F. Morales and C. Huici (Coords.): Psicología Social, 153-170. Madrid: McGraw-Hill.
• McGuire, W. J. (1985): Attitudes and attitude change. In G. Lindzey and E. Aronson (Eds.): The handbook of social psychology, vol. 2. New York: Random House.
• Rivero, G (2016). Internet news consumption, echo chambers? Spain: Politikon. https://politikon.es/2016/02/26/el-consumo-de-noticias-por-internet-camaras-de-eco/