CeDEx Brown Bag Seminar - Kieran Stockley

Title: Manufactured Misperceptions and Collective Action

Abstract: I propose a novel experiment to explore two research questions: (i) whether variation in perceived social image functions is sufficient to generate misperceptions, and (ii) how these misperceptions impact the ability to co-ordinate in collective action games. I first pre-screen individuals and elicit private views and perceived social image functions regarding expressing these views on a number of sociopolitical issues. I then use this pre-screen to selectively invite individuals to an experiment to induce constant priors about the share of participants holding opposing views on an issue in a session, with uncertainty about the exact session composition. Participants receive an information treatment about the social image functions collected in the pre-screen to induce variation in perceived social image environments. Participants can choose to share views with other participants to gain information about the session composition before playing a collective action game grouped with participants who share their view, in which actions are successful if a sufficient number of grouped participants join the action.