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SUMMARY:The social incentives hypothesis of political belief polarization 
 - Ben Tappin\, Royal Holloway\, University of London. 
DTSTART:20190306T150000Z
DTEND:20190306T160000Z
UID:TALK118960@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Melisa B
DESCRIPTION:_The political left and right disagree not only over questions
  of value\, but\, also\, over questions of fact—over what is true “out
  there” in society and the world. Surprisingly\, a large body of survey 
 data collected in the US during the past decade suggests that this disagre
 ement tends to be greatest among the most educated and most cognitively so
 phisticated opposing partisans. In other words\, the data indicate that th
 ese individuals display the greatest political polarization in their factu
 al beliefs. One hypothesis for this polarization contends that human cogni
 tion is biased to form beliefs that correctly signal to peers and importan
 t others whose “side” one is on—because failing to signal as such ca
 n incur significant material costs in the form of e.g.\, lost social suppo
 rt and ostracism. These incentives are understood to produce the above pol
 arization pattern because cognitively sophisticated partisans are better e
 quipped to reason about and discredit politically uncongenial evidence\; t
 hus\, causing greater polarization in their factual beliefs. In this talk\
 , I will present data from an ongoing project that speaks to this hypothes
 is. First\, I will present an analysis of survey data from Europe that exa
 mines whether the above polarization pattern generalizes outside of the US
  and to a novel and politically contested domain\; immigration. In this an
 alysis\, I also characterize the nature of any such polarization\, and exa
 mine how it has changed over time. Second\, I will present two randomized 
 experiments that investigate a candidate\, individual-level cognitive mech
 anism purported to explain widening belief polarization conditional on edu
 cation and cognitive sophistication._\n\n\n\n_Ben Tappin is a PhD student 
 in the department of psychology at Royal Holloway\, University of London. 
 He works on understanding the factors that shape peoples' political belief
 s and behaviour\, such as their preferences\, identities and prior experie
 nces. He is also interested in experimental design\, statistics and open s
 cience. From April\, Ben will be working as a postdoc in David Rand's lab 
 at MIT on topics related to misinformation and belief change in politics._
 \n  
LOCATION:Ground Floor Lecture Theatre\, Department of Psychology\, Downing
  Site
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