CeDEx Seminar - Matthias Schief (Brown University)

Matthias will deliver his seminar online via MS Teams.

Motives behind Affective Polarization

(joint with Devesh Rustagi)

Abstract: Affective polarization describes the phenomenon of heightened hostility between members of different political camps. It goes beyond disagreements on questions of policy and undermines trust and cooperation. Despite widespread concerns about the perceived increase in affective polarization and its adverse effects on the social fabric, there is little research devoted to exploring the motives behind affective polarization. We attempt to fill this gap by investigating in an experimental setting a) whether cooperation failures reflect ingroup-biased preferences or pessimistic beliefs about the trustworthiness of political adversaries, and b) whether pessimistic beliefs are driven by the anticipation of hostility on the part of political adversaries. Analyzing incentivized decisions of 1536 respondents in the UK who were recruited on Facebook, we document cooperation failures and we provide empirical evidence to substantiate the roles of both ingroup favoritism and pessimistic beliefs.