Middle-of-the-road stances risked alienating allies and opponents alike, research found

How do you navigate political discussions?  

You might expect, as many people do, that expressing “two-sided” or ambivalent positions about controversial political issues could help you bridge divides. In particular, you might expect that expressing ambivalence would make you more likeable to allies and opponents alike.  

A new study coauthored by DePaul Assistant Professor of Marketing Geoff Durso found exactly the opposite. Expressing ambivalence was not only unhelpful when it came to winning over opponents on contentious issues. It also hurt study subjects’ standing among those on the same side of the issue at hand.  

As a marketing professor with a background in psychology, Durso often works at the intersection of consumer behavior and political sentiment.   

Read on for a discussion of why the study’s results surprised him, what might explain the findings, and how insights from marketing and politics can inform each other. 

Or: Watch a video version of the interview on our YouTube channel, part of an ongoing series highlighting Driehaus faculty and what their research can teach us about the world around us.  

On politics as identity 

Driehaus College of Business (DCOB): What were your expectations going into this study? Did it surprise you to find that expressing ambivalence didn’t help — or in some cases even hurt — people’s likeability?  

Geoff Durso (GD): People generally like others who share their position. Then, if you think of people who disagree with you, it seemed reasonable to predict that expressing conflict in your own position might communicate some degree of respect or credence to your opponents’ position at the same time. So when it comes to both groups, you might expect that expressing two-sided opinions would be beneficial to people’s popularity, a sort of middle ground that everyone respected. But we find precisely the opposite pattern.   

My so-called position allies — those who agree with me on an issue — don’t like that I’m conflicted at all. They don’t like that I’m rocking the boat. And to my opponents, expressing conflict doesn’t matter, because I’m against them on the overall position. It doesn’t even register that I feel conflicted, or that my position acknowledges both sides.   

DCOB: How did you go about making sense of those results? Why do you think that was the case?    

GD: The way people think of each other is increasingly polarized. And what’s really interesting about that is that, sometimes, an issue position can become a group identity.   

Say, during the pandemic, I’m pro-mask mandate. But, I express conflict about it. I’m weakening the pro-mask mandate connection among my allies. And when it comes to an anti-mask mandate person, they consider me part of an outgroup “opponent” due to our larger disagreement on mask mandate policies.   

In other words, the nuances in my position don’t even register to opponents. And the same nuance makes my allies feel less connected to me.   

On the connections between marketing and politics 

DCOB: Some folks might be surprised to hear that a marketing professor researches political discourse. What do these two fields have in common?   

GD: I tell my students to think of politics as the marketing of a vote. You might have a dollar and you can give that dollar to any company (or candidate!) based on what products or positions they sell. Likewise, you can also give your vote to a candidate that represents what you want versus the other candidate. Both actions represent consumer behavior. It’s just the currency that varies.   

In other words, a marketplace is not just money, and it’s not just buying things. You can think more generally in terms of choices and decisions between many options in the marketplace. That’s what every marketing campaign has in common, whether it’s toothpaste brands or presidential candidates. The stakes vary, but the underlying marketing processes are similar.     

On where to go from here 

DCOB: Any takeaways from your study results that you think marketers should be paying attention to?   

GD: There’s more and more demand from consumers for brands to make sociopolitical kinds of statements. Our findings suggest that being two-sided about these is going to repel a lot of people. Trying to please everyone with a two-sided sociopolitical statement may simply lead to pleasing no one.   

DCOB: What questions has this research left you with? What do you want to understand better about this issue?   

GD: A truism of psychology is that we judge other people by their actions, but we judge ourselves by our intentions. Expressing ambivalence in our own sociopolitical position may feel personally right (we intend to bridge political divides) but we fail to appreciate how this would be perceived in reality – we may seem inconsistent or waffling, for instance.   

How do you get people to change their expectations around expressing ambivalence? How do you get them to shift away from being focused on their own intentions? Are there ways to generate win-win consensus on divisive sociopolitical issues, and how best to do so? That’s what I’d like to learn a bit more about in my future work.