I want to describe a group of people who are experiencing a kind of “echo chamber” effect, reinforcing each other’s beliefs, e.g.:
The clique tends to have a ____ culture: once someone suggests an idea, the whole group clings on to it.
I’m gravitating towards self-reinforcing and self-feeding, but these both sound hopelessly off the mark.
Reading the Wikipedia article on Echo chamber (media), I found this line:
Another emerging term for this echoing and homogenizing effect on the Internet within social communities is cultural tribalism.
Tribalism — ODO
noun 1.1 derogatory The behaviour and attitudes that stem from strong loyalty to one's own tribe or social group
"a society motivated by cultural tribalism"
echo chamber, which is the correct term. Cultural tribalism is, to me, redundant (and anything but novel: though neither of these criticisms are an indictment of your answer, but of the digital sociologists who coined that term), and doesn't highlight the echo chamber effect specifically. I recommend you edit the answer to highlight echo chamber on its own.
Yes-man — M-W
noun a person (especially a man) who agrees with everything that someone says : a person who supports the opinions or ideas of someone else in order to earn that person's approval
The clique tends to have a yes-man culture: once someone suggests an idea, the whole group clings on to it.
The result of a bit of research:
Consentient (Merriam Webster)
disposed to agree with or conform to
united in opinion, judgment, view
self-homogenizing
Sorry, I haven't been able to find a definition. I found that some other people have thought of this too, though. For example:
But when there are only two flawed parties to choose from—one consisting of a loose coalition of minorities and the other a self-homogenizing group—there’s really no room for a third, more honest option for those of us who fall somewhere in between. "What makes someone a ‘person of color’ or ‘white’ in America?" by Daniel Rivero, fusion.net
This phenomenon [trend of push-and-pull migration away from rural areas] isn’t unique to Galesburg. It happens in places like Quincy, Pekin, Elmhurst. The list goes on of these fuck-up towns. They become self-homogenizing. Then they run themselves into the ground because of their lack of diversity. "The Opposite of Suicide II" by Kyle Mustain, writingdisorder.com
Let's try it out in your sentence.
The clique tends to have a self-homogenizing culture: once someone suggests an idea, the whole group clings to it.
Perhaps zealous would fit:
marked by fervent partisanship for a person, a cause, or an ideal : filled with or characterized by zeal — zealous missionaries
(Merriam-Webster)
The link has some literature examples.
What you're describing is similar to confirmation bias: the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. - Wikipedia. A clique would already have a culture and a collection of common beliefs. People contribute to that in a self-reinforcing, echo chamber manner.
I couldn't come up with a good way to shoe-horn it into the blank in your sentence, but you would get the same meaning with:
The clique tends to practice confirmation bias: once someone suggests an idea, the whole group clings on to it.
Confirmation bias goes to the mechanism driving people to say the things that the group will cling to. From the other direction, members of the group will cling to ideas suggested by other members in order to conform and strengthen the group: to act in accordance with prevailing standards or customs; the pressure to conform - M-W.
The clique tends to have a culture of conformity: once someone suggests an idea, the whole group clings on to it.
Comments are transient, and Rohit suggested a good term, so I'll preserve it here: groupthink: a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a consensus decision without critical evaluation of alternative viewpoints by actively suppressing dissenting viewpoints, and by isolating themselves from outside influences. - Wikipedia.
The clique tends to have a groupthinking culture: once someone suggests an idea, the whole group clings on to it.
Chauvinism?
excessive or prejudiced support for one's own cause, group, or sex.
