Many college experiences are designed to build students’ capacity for interacting with those who hold different ideals, attitudes, and values about society. Yet recent college graduates often struggle with ideological bubble-breaking. A study published in the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education found that students recalled few meaningful, effective efforts to prepare them for the ideological divides they faced after graduation.
The question guiding the study was, "How do participants experience the ideological bubbles in which they live, and what efforts do they take to break out of them?" Matthew R. Johnson and Jennifer Peacock began their study in Spring 2015 at a large, public, primarily residential, 4-year research university located in the Midwest. From a pool of 100 graduating seniors who had been extensively involved in community and campus-based programs, they chose 19 students to interview prior to and each year after graduation. Of the 17 participants who remained in the study two years after graduation, 15 were working full-time; the other two were in graduate school.
Recognition of the Bubble. Participants recognized they were living in a bubble, which was primarily driven by their socioeconomic status as college graduates. Many participants were surrounded by like-minded people in their careers (particularly those working in nonprofits) and in their peer networks. In acknowledging the bubble, participants conveyed uneasiness, internal strife, and at times guilt. They recognized some incongruence between maintaining homogenous ideological networks and holding civic engagement as a value.
Breaking Bubbles. Participants engaged in a variety of activities to deal with their insecurity, strife, and guilt around maintaining largely homogeneous networks and try to break out of their ideological bubbles. They frequently cited social media as the place where they were most commonly exposed to diverse ideological views; however, only one participant found that social media provided meaningful engagement. For many, consuming media from a different ideological viewpoint caused significant discord. Sustained conversations with someone who held different ideological beliefs occurred regularly for half the participants. However, these participants usually identified only one or two people with whom they frequently discussed political and social issues and did not mostly agree. The remaining participants struggled to identify anyone with whom they disagreed ideologically yet maintained regular conversation.
The Role of Work in Bubble-Breaking. For some, work reified their bubbles; for others, it was their most influential source of bubble-breaking. For participants who worked in a nonprofit, work tended to be a bubble of ideological homogeneity. For others, their job was the primary or even sole source of bubble-breaking. Many participants expressed the difficulty they faced in navigating a work environment where they met perpetual ideological misalignment.
Fuzzy Contributions of College to Bubble-Breaking. Most participants had difficulty describing how college prepared them to break ideological bubbles. Their capacities for bubble-breaking, however modest, largely stemmed from their precollege experiences. The few participants who grew in their abilities to engage across ideological differences spoke about a single influential program or experience from college that helped strengthen this attribute: namely their majors or cohort-based programs, such as an honors program. Participants overwhelmingly found that the college did little to foster ideological diversity.
Faculty and administrators should evaluate how well they prepare students for engagement across ideologies. Johnson and Peacock offer ideas for interventions to better promote learning between people who hold differing views, including intentional efforts to reduce intergroup anxiety, physical spaces in which people can engage across ideological differences, and well-established models such as intergroup dialogue and public deliberation. The authors hope that their study serves as a clarion call for better supporting students to navigate ideological differences and bubbles.
Note: This article is in the Educational Psychology topic area. View more articles in the Educational Psychology, School Psychology and Training topic area.