The political divide: The case of expectations and preferences

Trent McNamara and Roberto Mosquera

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2024, vol. 110, issue C

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Bayesian updating; Misperceptions; Information intervention; Survey experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D61 D72 D83 H20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:soceco:v:110:y:2024:i:c:s221480432400051x

DOI: 10.1016/j.socec.2024.102213

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