Freedom of Expression in Interpersonal Interactions

For a half-century, scholars have examined how people navigate political discussions, finding that many avoid expressing their true opinions to others who disagree and instead choose to remain silent (Noelle-Neumann 1974) or conform to the group’s opinion (Carlson and Settle 2016; Levitan and Verhulst 2016). These everyday experiences of censorship draw less attention than concerns about people silencing themselves to avoid being “canceled” in more publicly visible ways (Lukianoff and Haidt 2019). However, these seemingly mundane, everyday political encounters restrict the free flow of opinion, information, and dialogue on important political topics. The majority of previous research on political discussion focuses on the effects of exposure to disagreement (Huckfeldt, Johnson, and Sprague 2004; Mutz 2006), but most of this work does not directly examine how the interpersonal dynamics of a political conversation affect the choices that people make about political expression. Carlson and Settle (2022a) build on extensive qualitative research (Eliasoph 1998; Walsh 2010) to argue that social and psychological impediments in interpersonal conversations—namely, people’s desire to preserve their esteem and relationships—might structure how forthcoming they are about their political opinions. Consistent with previous research, the authors found that disagreement is indeed a central roadblock reducing the likelihood of people expressing their true opinions. However, disagreement is not the only challenge that people face in discussion: Carlson and Settle (2022a) identified other factors—including the political knowledge gap, strength of relationship, and power dynamic between discussants—that could affect how likely people are to express their true opinions. Similarly, recent scholarship highlights other important divides in American politics, such as deep involvement in politics (Krupnikov and Ryan 2022), that could affect the dynamics of discussion. A remaining question is how these factors stack up against one another. To address this gap in our knowledge, we conducted a preregistered conjoint experiment in which we randomized features of a hypothetical political discussant and asked participants to report how comfortable they would be expressing their true political opinions in a discussion with the person described (Carlson and Settle 2022b). We find that, consistent with previous research, expected disagreement is indeed the strongest factor contributing to opinion expression. Specifically, participants were seven points more likely to report that they would express their true opinions in a conversation with someone who was a copartisan compared to an out-partisan. However, they also reported being more likely to express their opinions in faceto-face conversations than online, as well as with people with whom they had a close relationship. Where potential discussants learn about politics also was influential: participants reported being less likely to express their true opinions in conversations in which discussants preferred fringe media outlets relative to a preference for mainstreammedia. Finally, we find that participants reported being less likely to express their true opinions to people who shared their gender but were more comfortable expressing their true opinions to those who shared their racial or ethnic identity. Altogether, these results suggest that expected disagreement remains an important roadblock to free expression in political discussion, but it is not the only one.