SBEE seminar series: Eugen Dimant
Hate Trumps Love: The Impact of Political Polarization on Social Preferences
Abstract:
Political polarization has ruptured the fabric of U.S. society. I quantify this phenomenon through the use of 5 pre-registered studies, comprising 15 behavioral experiments and a diverse set of over 8,600 participants. The focus of this paper is to examine various behavioral-, belief-, and norm-based layers of (non-)strategic decision-making that are plausibly affected by existing polarization in the context of Donald J. Trump. I find strong heterogeneous effects: ingroup-love occurs in the perceptional domain (how close one feels towards others), whereas outgroup-hate occurs in the behavioral domain (how one helps/harms/cooperates with others). The rich setting also allows me to examine the mechanisms: observed intergroup conflict can be attributed to one's grim expectations about the cooperativeness of the opposing faction, rather than one's actual unwillingness to cooperate. In a final step, I test whether popular behavioral interventions (defaults and norm-nudging) can eradicate the detrimental impact of polarization in the contexts studied here. The interventions are ineffective in closing the polarization gap, suggesting that structural -- on top of behavioral -- changes are needed to heal the society
Speaker Bio:
Eugen Dimant is an Associate Professor of Practice in Behavioral & Decision Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a fellow in the Behavioral and Decision Sciences Program, the Center for Social Norms and Behavioral Dynamics at the University of Pennsylvania, an external fellow of the Centre for Decision Research & Experimental Economics (CeDEx) at the University of Nottingham & a Network Fellow at CESifo, Munich.
His research interests center on experimental behavioral economics with a particular focus on behavioral ethics, crime, and corruption. His most recent work has examined the role of social norms and nudges in affecting self-serving belief distortions and the contagion of pro- and anti-social behavior among individuals and groups. As a secondary interest, he is also involved in empirical research examining the relationships between corruption, terrorism, and migration.
The Social, Behavioral and Experimental Economics seminar series is a joint presentation of the School of Information, the Ross School of Business and the Department of Economics (LSA).
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