{"title":"政治分歧:期望与偏好","authors":"Trent McNamara , Roberto Mosquera","doi":"10.1016/j.socec.2024.102213","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The divergence of attitudes towards their ideological extremes has become an identifying feature in the United States. Little is known about its source, how large it is, whether information can attenuate it, and its causal impact on civic behavior. We design a survey experiment that identifies differences in beliefs rather than preferences as a source of division. We randomly introduce factual information about government spending and show that it corrects beliefs. We further use this variation and estimate effects on a suite of outcomes. For individuals who learn the government spends worse than they would prefer, they become 0.35 s.d. less supportive towards the government, believe the government is less efficient by 0.42 s.d.<!--> <!-->and are less willing to compromise and trust by 0.43 s.d. We do not find any changes for those who learn the government spends more in line with their preferences. This asymmetric response is consistent with a literature showing that negative information has a greater impact on attitudes and beliefs than positive information.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":51637,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics","volume":"110 ","pages":"Article 102213"},"PeriodicalIF":1.6000,"publicationDate":"2024-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"The political divide: The case of expectations and preferences\",\"authors\":\"Trent McNamara , Roberto Mosquera\",\"doi\":\"10.1016/j.socec.2024.102213\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"<div><p>The divergence of attitudes towards their ideological extremes has become an identifying feature in the United States. Little is known about its source, how large it is, whether information can attenuate it, and its causal impact on civic behavior. We design a survey experiment that identifies differences in beliefs rather than preferences as a source of division. We randomly introduce factual information about government spending and show that it corrects beliefs. We further use this variation and estimate effects on a suite of outcomes. For individuals who learn the government spends worse than they would prefer, they become 0.35 s.d. less supportive towards the government, believe the government is less efficient by 0.42 s.d.<!--> <!-->and are less willing to compromise and trust by 0.43 s.d. We do not find any changes for those who learn the government spends more in line with their preferences. This asymmetric response is consistent with a literature showing that negative information has a greater impact on attitudes and beliefs than positive information.</p></div>\",\"PeriodicalId\":51637,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics\",\"volume\":\"110 \",\"pages\":\"Article 102213\"},\"PeriodicalIF\":1.6000,\"publicationDate\":\"2024-04-15\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"0\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"96\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221480432400051X\",\"RegionNum\":3,\"RegionCategory\":\"经济学\",\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"Q2\",\"JCRName\":\"ECONOMICS\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221480432400051X","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
The political divide: The case of expectations and preferences
The divergence of attitudes towards their ideological extremes has become an identifying feature in the United States. Little is known about its source, how large it is, whether information can attenuate it, and its causal impact on civic behavior. We design a survey experiment that identifies differences in beliefs rather than preferences as a source of division. We randomly introduce factual information about government spending and show that it corrects beliefs. We further use this variation and estimate effects on a suite of outcomes. For individuals who learn the government spends worse than they would prefer, they become 0.35 s.d. less supportive towards the government, believe the government is less efficient by 0.42 s.d. and are less willing to compromise and trust by 0.43 s.d. We do not find any changes for those who learn the government spends more in line with their preferences. This asymmetric response is consistent with a literature showing that negative information has a greater impact on attitudes and beliefs than positive information.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly the Journal of Socio-Economics) welcomes submissions that deal with various economic topics but also involve issues that are related to other social sciences, especially psychology, or use experimental methods of inquiry. Thus, contributions in behavioral economics, experimental economics, economic psychology, and judgment and decision making are especially welcome. The journal is open to different research methodologies, as long as they are relevant to the topic and employed rigorously. Possible methodologies include, for example, experiments, surveys, empirical work, theoretical models, meta-analyses, case studies, and simulation-based analyses. Literature reviews that integrate findings from many studies are also welcome, but they should synthesize the literature in a useful manner and provide substantial contribution beyond what the reader could get by simply reading the abstracts of the cited papers. In empirical work, it is important that the results are not only statistically significant but also economically significant. A high contribution-to-length ratio is expected from published articles and therefore papers should not be unnecessarily long, and short articles are welcome. Articles should be written in a manner that is intelligible to our generalist readership. Book reviews are generally solicited but occasionally unsolicited reviews will also be published. Contact the Book Review Editor for related inquiries.