Out of sync, out of society: Political beliefs and social networks

Who is more likely to be isolated from society in terms of political beliefs? To answer this question, we measure whether individuals’ beliefs are “out of sync”—the extent to which their views differ with their contemporaries—and examine how the level of synchronization is associated with the size of important-matter and political-matter discussion networks. The results show that people with weaker belief synchronization are more likely to have smaller important-matter discussion networks. However, additional analyses of political-matter discussion networks show that weaker belief synchronization is associated with smaller networks only among those without a high school diploma and even provides some advantage in maintaining larger networks for the college-educated. Overall, the results imply that political beliefs that are “out of sync” correspond to the individual being “out of society,” whereas the aspects of “out of society” are quite different among educational groups.