Intervention (Hidden)
We plan to implement Wave 3 in late November 2021. We will pay the participants for the accuracy of their predictions of the unemployment rate and US public health system ranking in September 2021, and to explore the mechanisms behind their information processing in the first two waves. A list of the experimental instructions and survey questions are included in the Appendix.
Stage 1: Minimal groupiness and political identities
1. Groupiness: We repeat the minimal groupiness measurements from Wave 1, i.e., other-other allocations based on minimal groups.
1) We randomly assign participants into one of two minimal groups, circle or triangle.
2) Participants allocate \$ 6 between two other participants under three scenarios:
a. if one is from the circle group and one is from the triangle group,
b. if both are from the circle group,
c. if both are from the triangle group.
2. Political identity and affective polarization. Participants then answer the same survey questions designed to measure their political party affiliation (or lack thereof) or leaning. The repetition of these questions are designed to check the consistency of participants' party affiliation or leaning collected in Wave 1, and to give participants an opportunity to report any changes. Additionally, we elicit participants' vaccination status and intentions, and administer a number of survey questions that measure the extent of participants' affective polarization, used in the political science literature.
3. Allocation based on political identities: Participants are asked again to allocate $ 6 between two other participants under three scenarios:
a. if one is from the Democrats group and one is from the Republicans group,
b. if both are from the Democrats group,
c. if both are from the Republicans group.
The updated measure, together with our groupiness measure from the minimal groups, will enable us to do a diff-in-diff analysis of whether election outcomes change political intergroup preferences assuming the stability of the groupiness measure.
4. Social identity survey and self esteem measure: We ask participants to rate the importance of various natural identities, including political party, gender, race, national (American) identity, and state identity. We then measure participants self esteem using the Rosenberg self esteem scale.
Stage 2: Prior Belief, Information Processing
We first elicit participants' positions on mask wearing. Then each participant goes through the following information processing and updating process:
1) Each participant is randomly assigned a summary article reporting the efficacy of mask wearing from a large randomized control trial in Bangladesh, containing information assembled from right- or left-leaning sources. Participants are informed that they will need to answer a question about the article which they can answer if they carefully read them. A correct answer is worth \$1. This is designed to ensure that people actually read the articles. The question is shown on the next screen.
2) After answering the review question, participants have the possibility to update their position on the efficacy of mask wearing.
Stage 3: Other-Other Allocation based on states
We repeat the groupiness measurements in a new context, i.e., other-other allocations based on whether a recipient is from the same state as the participant.
Participants allocate $ 6 between two other participants under three scenarios:
a. if one is from the same state as the participant and one is from another state,
b. if both are from the same state as the participant,
c. if both are from other states.
Closing survey: In the final Stage of the experiment, participants answer a series of survey questions.