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No. 285 · Evidence · Sociology

Echo Chambers

Surrounded only by people who agree, our views grow more extreme and more certain.

An Echo Chamber is any space, from a workplace to a social feed, where the people and sources around you mostly agree with you. It feels comfortable, but it distorts reality: we overrate our own views, underrate others, and lose touch with what the wider world actually thinks.

Deliberately seek out people with different backgrounds and opinions. Curate your feeds to include thoughtful voices that challenge you, and engage respectfully rather than to win. At work and at home, make it safe for others to disagree with you, since dissent is how you learn.

In the Almanac

“Sunstein’s Colorado experiment”, 2001–2005 · “Facebook’s own study”, 2015

Both stories in full, three ways to use it and where it misleads.

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Echo Chambers: The Dangers of Surrounding Yourself with Familiar Voices

Questions

What is Echo Chambers?

An Echo Chamber is any space, from a workplace to a social feed, where the people and sources around you mostly agree with you. It feels comfortable, but it distorts reality: we overrate our own views, underrate others, and lose touch with what the wider world actually thinks.

How do you use Echo Chambers?

Deliberately seek out people with different backgrounds and opinions. Curate your feeds to include thoughtful voices that challenge you, and engage respectfully rather than to win. At work and at home, make it safe for others to disagree with you, since dissent is how you learn.

When does Echo Chambers matter?

Echo Chambers is one of the 68 mental models for evidence, the situations where you ask: Is this really true? Within that, it belongs to “Where information comes from”, alongside Bias from Incentives, Filter Bubble and Garbage In Garbage Out.

What is an example of Echo Chambers?

Two stories show it at work: Sunstein’s Colorado experiment (2001–2005) and Facebook’s own study (2015). Both are told in full in The Mental Models Daily Almanac, which has two stories for each of its 365 models.

Which mental models are related to Echo Chambers?

Filter Bubble, Groupthink and Confirmation Bias. Echo Chambers itself comes from sociology.