Ideological polarization and collective resistance

Last registered on July 11, 2025

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Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title

Ideological polarization and collective resistance

RCT ID

AEARCTR-0016375

Initial registration date

July 11, 2025

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published

July 11, 2025, 6:26 AM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country

United States of America

Region

Primary Investigator

Name

Daniela Grieco

Affiliation

Università degli Studi di Milano

Contact Primary Investigator

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name

Timothy Cason

PI Affiliation

Purdue University

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Marco Faillo

PI Affiliation

University of Trento

Contact Investigator

PI Name

Luca Zarri

PI Affiliation

University of Verona

Contact Investigator

Additional Trial Information

Status

In development

Start date

2025-07-14

End date

2025-11-30

Keywords

Behavior

Additional Keywords

polarization, collective resistance, expropriation, identity

JEL code(s)

C92, D74

Secondary IDs

Prior work

This trial does not extend or rely on any prior RCTs.

Abstract

This paper presents a collective resistance (CR) game to study how polarized opinions on key topics can foster leader’s transgression and/or deter coordinated collective resistance. Polarization is nowadays at the center of the political and economic debate since it fuels intolerance and discrimination, diminishes societal trust, and increases violence. In a polarized society, the usual division of people into groups competing for resources is exacerbated and may easily turn into conflict that leaders may exploit.
In this paper, we dig into the multifaceted nature of political polarization by identifying five key issues that are crucial to construct a person’s identity and are expected to polarize people: attitudes towards migrants, gender, climate change, LGBTQ rights, and income/wealth distribution. The key reason why we adopt an issue-centered approach to polarization is that we conjecture that contemporary polarization in beliefs people care about may not reflect classical divisions related to traditional political parties.
Prior work convincingly showed that coordinated resistance by citizens plays a crucial role in deterring leader expropriation (Weingast, 1995; 1997) with the consequent possible deterioration of the rule of law. However, for this to be the case it is also important to understand whether and under what conditions citizens are able to defeat “divide-and-conquer” strategies that leaders likely employ (Cason and Mui, 2015).
Our study is articulated in two phases. First, we survey a sample of US citizens in order to learn: (1) which of the aforementioned five issues are subjectively considered as the most important, (2) which of them are expected to generate more conflict and (3) which issues actually polarize people more. Secondly, we match subjects who have identified the same issue as the most important in groups of three people (one “sovereign” and two “citizens”) and examine the effects on citizens’ coordinated resistance and sovereign’s transgression rates of being grouped with someone holding “extreme views” (i.e., similar or opposing views). We also test whether ideological proximity between the sovereign and a citizen can strengthen collusion against the other citizen.

External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation

Cason , Timothy et al. 2025. "Ideological polarization and collective resistance." AEA RCT Registry. July 11. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.16375-1.0

Sponsors & Partners

Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)

Intervention (Hidden)

Intervention Start Date

2025-07-14

Intervention End Date

2025-11-30

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)

First phase (Survey): for each respondent, the issue perceived as the most important will be identified, together with the respondent’s position about this issue.
Second phase (Experiment): respondents will be matched in groups of three people sharing the same issue as the most important, and differing among each other depending on the distance between their opinions. Once the groups are formed, they will be assigned to the role of sovereign or citizen. We will test the effect of our treatments on the sovereign’s transgression rate and on the citizens’ coordinated resistance rate.

Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)

Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

First phase: Survey
The survey will consist of two blocks:
- questions on participants’ opinions about five societal issues (immigration, gender discrimination, LGBTQ+ discrimination, climate change, income and wealth distribution)
- socio-demographic questions.

Participants’ opinions:
Participants will be asked to state how much they agreed with each of proposed sentences, choosing a value on a scale from 0 (“Not at all”) to 10 (“A great deal”)

Immigration:
1. I would be comfortable having an immigrant, foreign worker as a neighbor.
2. When jobs are scarce, employers should give priority to people of this country over immigrants.
3. We should admit more immigrants to legally live and work in the United States.

Gender discrimination
1. When jobs are scarce, men should have more right to a job than women.
2. If a woman earns more money than her husband, it's almost certain to cause problems.
3. University education is more important for a boy than for a girl.

LGBTQ+ discrimination
1. Homosexual couples are as good parents as other couples.
2. I would be comfortable having a LGBTQ+ person as a neighbor.
3. Sexual orientation should not affect career prospects in the Military.

Climate change
1. Climate change is real.
2. A large part of climate change is due to human activity.
3. I feel a personal responsibility to try to reduce climate change.

Income and wealth distribution
1. Government should take more responsibility to ensure that everyone is provided for.
2. In the United States, there are many different income classes. If one group becomes wealthier, it is usually the case that this comes at the expense of other groups.

Participants will be also asked to:
- order the issues from the most important to the least important for them at this moment
- order the issues from the most likely to the least likely to generate conflicting views at this moment.

Socio-demographic questions:
- education level
- self-identified political leaning (Republican, Democrat, Independent, Other, No Preference)
- socio-economic status (“social ladder” question)
Further variables are available on Prolific (gender, age, race, employment status, student status)

Second phase: Experiment
Survey respondents are divided according to the topic they have identified as the most important. Within the sub-sample of respondents who selected the same topic, for each individual we compute the distance between her response and the response of others. We form groups of three subjects: one sovereign and two citizens.

Treatments:
Citizens coalition: the two citizens have a similar position on the topic, while the sovereign has an opposite position. All of them are informed about this.
Sovereign and citizens’ coalition: the sovereign and one citizen have a similar position on the topic and the other citizen has an opposite position. All of them are informed about this.
Baseline 1: the two citizens have a similar position on the topic, while the sovereign has an opposite position. Nobody is informed about this.
Baseline 2: the sovereign and one citizen have a similar position on the topic and the other citizen has an opposite position. Nobody is informed about this.

Treatment instructions:
Depending on the treatment, the three subjects are informed about their role (citizen or sovereign) and receive information (or not) about the ideological distance between themselves and their group members. Then they are presented with the earning tables, reporting the amount of money that they and the other two people will receive depending on the choices they make. The earning tables are based on Cason and Mui (2013); payoffs will be expressed in GB Pounds. Before making their (one-shot) choices (we use the strategy method to elicit whether the leader transgresses and whether citizens resist under all possibles scenarios), they will answer a set of control questions. We will exclude from the experiment those subjects who make at least two mistakes in the control questions. After everyone has made their choices, the outcome screen will display their choice as well as the choices of the people they were grouped with and the earnings.

Experimental Design Details

Randomization Method

Randomization done by the software

Randomization Unit

Group

Was the treatment clustered?

Yes

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters

300 groups (each group is made of 3 subjects)

Sample size: planned number of observations

900 observations

Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms

75 groups per treatment, 4 treatments

Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)

Based on the most similar environment in Cason and Mui (2007), which however features a repeated collective resistance game, we anticipate the difference in the mean percentage of leader’s non transgression between the baseline and our treatments to be approximately 15%. For the study to be powered to identify an average effect size of about 0.50 at 80% power (significance level of 5%), the sample size required is 75 leaders (and thus 75 groups) per treatment. Since our study differs significantly from the treatments described in Cason and Mui (2007), we will run a pilot to test our estimations and make the appropriate adjustments.

Supporting Documents and Materials

IRB