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Field
Intervention (Public)
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Before
Subjects are shown 5 messages, formatted to look like social media posts, one at a time. Posts 1, 3, and 5 are randomly selected from tweets by EU members of parliament (with minor rewording for clarity) that have been pre-tested on another set of participants in a different study. Based on this pre-test we order posts from most pro- to most anti-immigration. The number of likes for each text will be randomised from a uniform distribution between 1 and 200. For posts 2 and 4, subjects are shown placebo texts.
Subjects are randomised into six treatments that vary in two dimensions. First, subjects are either told that the posts "have been liked by previous participants" or not. Second, we vary the ability to like the posts: in one condition subjects are not given the possibility to like, in another subjects can like privately, and in a third condition subjects can like publicly---thereby disentangling the effect of liking per se and the visibility of the like.
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After
Subjects are shown 6 messages, formatted to look like social media posts, one at a time. Posts 2, 4, and 6 are randomly selected from tweets by EU members of parliament (with minor rewording for clarity) that have been pre-tested on another set of participants in a different study. Based on this pre-test we order posts from most pro- to most anti-immigration. The number of likes for each text will be randomised from two uniform distributions: low [1,50] or high [151,200]. For posts 1, 3 and 5, subjects are shown placebo texts.
Subjects are randomised into six treatments that vary in two dimensions. First, subjects are either told that the posts "have been liked by previous participants" or not. Second, we vary the ability to like the posts: in one condition subjects are not given the possibility to like, in another subjects can like privately, and in a third condition subjects can like publicly---thereby disentangling the effect of liking per se and the visibility of the like.
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Field
Experimental Design (Public)
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Before
We first measure participants' attitudes towards immigration using a random subset of questions from the ESS.
We then randomise them into 1 of the 6 treatments described above, where they are shown 5 posts (3 on immigration, 2 placebos) with varying number of likes.
We then measure their post-treatment attitudes using the remaining ESS questions, elicit their willingness to donate to the pro-immigration charity and their willingness to sign a pro-immigration petition.
We finish with an attention check (asking participants if they remember how many likes they observed on 2 of the posts) and their trust in a randomly selected post.
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After
We first measure participants' attitudes towards immigration using a random subset of questions from the ESS.
We then randomise them into 1 of the 6 treatments described above, where they are shown 6 posts (3 on immigration, 3 placebos) with varying number of likes.
We then measure their post-treatment attitudes using the remaining ESS questions, elicit their willingness to donate to the pro-immigration charity and their willingness to sign a pro-immigration petition.
We finish with an attention check (asking participants if they remember how many likes they observed on 2 of the posts) and their trust in a randomly selected post.
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