Group Identity and Belief Formation: Implications for Political Polarization

Group Identity and Belief Formation: Implications for Political Polarization

Abstract: To evaluate the impact of group identity on belief formation, we conducted online experiments before and after the 2020 US presidential election. We elicit participants' beliefs about future unemployment statistics and provide relevant news summaries. We find that people pay money to avoid information from political outgroups and attribute lower weight to this information when updating beliefs. An intervention which unlabels information sources decreases outgroup information avoidance by 50%, an effect driven by groupish participants. A debiasing intervention equalizing instrumental values of information sources reduces only universalists' information avoidance. We establish source utility as a key mechanism contributing to polarization.

More information on Prof. Kevin Bauer can be found here.

Please use the following link for Zoom: https://uni-frankfurt.zoom.us/j/62958556058?pwd=b01qWXlrbVMzc1JFVEhjSWNvdGZPQT09