"You're still worth it": The moral and relational context of politically motivated unfriending decisions in online networks.

ABSTRACT: Political disagreements in social media can result in removing (i.e., "unfriending") a person from one's online network. Given that such actions could lead to the (ideological) homogenization of networks, it is pivotal to understand the psychological processes intertwined in unfriending decisions. This requires not only addressing different types of disagreements but also analyzing them in the relational context they occur. This article proposes that political disagreements leading to drastic measures such as unfriending are attributable to more deeply rooted moral dissents. Based on moral foundations theory and relationship regulation research, this work presents empirical evidence from two experiments. In both studies, subjects rated political statements (that violated different moral fo

SUBMITTER: Neubaum G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7799818 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature