Group identity and belief formation: a decomposition of political polarization

  • How does group identity affect belief formation? To address this question, we conduct a series of online experiments with a representative sample of individuals in the US. Using the setting of the 2020 US presidential election, we find evidence of intergroup preference across three distinct components of the belief formation cycle: a biased prior belief, avoid-ance of outgroup information sources, and a belief-updating process that places greater (less) weight on prior (new) information. We further find that an intervention reducing the salience of information sources decreases outgroup information avoidance by 50%. In a social learn-ing context in wave 2, we find participants place 33% more weight on ingroup than outgroup guesses. Through two waves of interventions, we identify source utility as the mechanism driving group effects in belief formation. Our analyses indicate that our observed effects are driven by groupy participants who exhibit stable and consistent intergroup preferences in both allocation decisions and belief formation across all three waves. These results suggest that policymakers could reduce the salience of group and partisan identity associated with a policy to decrease outgroup information avoidance and increase policy uptake.

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Author:Kevin BauerORCiDGND, Yan Chen, Florian HettGND, Michael KosfeldORCiDGND
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-715416
URL:https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4670473
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4670473
Series (Serial Number):SAFE working paper (409)
Publisher:SAFE
Place of publication:Frankfurt am Main
Document Type:Working Paper
Language:English
Year of Completion:2023
Year of first Publication:2023
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2024/01/08
Tag:group identity; information demand; information processing; political polarization
Edition:December 19, 2023
Page Number:137
Note:
JEL-Klassifikation: D47 Market Design
Note:
The research was financially supported by the Leibniz Institute for financial Research SAFE and the University of Michigan.
HeBIS-PPN:515414557
Institutes:Wirtschaftswissenschaften / Wirtschaftswissenschaften
Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / House of Finance (HoF)
Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / Center for Financial Studies (CFS)
Wissenschaftliche Zentren und koordinierte Programme / Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe (SAFE)
Dewey Decimal Classification:3 Sozialwissenschaften / 33 Wirtschaft / 330 Wirtschaft
JEL-Classification:C Mathematical and Quantitative Methods / C7 Game Theory and Bargaining Theory / C78 Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
C Mathematical and Quantitative Methods / C9 Design of Experiments / C92 Laboratory, Group Behavior
D Microeconomics / D8 Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty / D82 Asymmetric and Private Information
Sammlungen:Universitätspublikationen
Licence (German):License LogoDeutsches Urheberrecht