Partisanship, Inequality, and Destructive Behavior: An Experiment with Republicans and Democrats

This is double seminar.

Speaker: Subhasish Chowdhury (University of Sheffield, United Kingdom)
Title: Partisanship, Inequality, and Destructive Behavior: An Experiment with Republicans and Democrats

Abstract
Political partisanship and inequality are the two most divisive social identities in the contemporary USA. This study investigates experimentally the effects of partisanship and endowment inequality on nasty behavior. We implement an online Joy of Destruction game, where a subject can destroy another subject’s payoff at no cost or retaliation. We control whether the decision maker has access to information about the other, passive, subject’s political affiliation (Democrat or Republican) and monetary endowment (50% higher than decision maker’s). The results show that without any information, the destruction rate is similar to what is observed in literature, but knowing any of the two pieces of information increases destruction. The effects, however, vary substantially across political identity. While disadvantageous endowment inequality dominates the decision of the Republicans, the political identity-based destruction dominates the same for the Democrats. Although there are some gender effects, these results are robust across race, being the resident of a swing state, and the level of political opinion; and are supported by a text analysis of the comments of the subjects. Joint paper with Joo Young Jeon and Shakun D. Mago.