Hate Trumps Love: The Impact of Political Polarization on Social Preferences

Eugen Dimant

No 29, ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series from University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany

Abstract: Political polarization has ruptured the fabric of U.S. society. The focus of this paper is to examine various layers of (non-)strategic decision-making that are plausibly affected by political polarization through the lens of one's feelings of hate and love for Donald J. Trump. In several pre-registered experiments, I document the behavioral-, belief-, and norm-based mechanisms through which perceptions of interpersonal closeness, altruism, and cooperativeness are affected by polarization, both within and between political factions. To separate ingroup-love from outgroup-hate, the political setting is contrasted with a minimal group setting. 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). In addition, the pernicious outcomes of partisan identity also comport with the elicited social norms. Noteworthy, the rich experimental setting also allows me to examine the drivers of these behaviors, suggesting that the observed partisan rift might be not as forlorn as previously suggested: in the contexts studied here, the adverse behavioral impact of the resulting intergroup conflict can be attributed to one's grim expectations about the cooperativeness of the opposing faction, as opposed to one's actual unwillingness to cooperate with them.

Keywords: Identity; Norms; Political Polarization; Social Preferences; Trump (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B41 D01 D9 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2020-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-exp, nep-pol and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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https://www.econtribute.de/RePEc/ajk/ajkdps/ECONtribute_029_2020.pdf First version, 2020 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Hate Trumps Love: The Impact of Political Polarization on Social Preferences (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ajk:ajkdps:029

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