Working Paper: NBER ID: w19080
Authors: John G. Bullock; Alan S. Gerber; Seth J. Hill; Gregory A. Huber
Abstract: Partisanship seems to affect factual beliefs about politics. For example, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say that the deficit rose during the Clinton administration; Democrats are more likely to say that inflation rose under Reagan. We investigate whether such patterns reflect differing beliefs among partisans or instead reflect a desire to praise one party or criticize another. We develop a model of partisan survey response and report two experiments that are based on the model. The experiments show that small payments for correct and "don't know" responses sharply diminish the gap between Democrats and Republicans in responses to "partisan" factual questions. The results suggest that the apparent differences in factual beliefs between members of different parties may be more illusory than real.
Keywords: Partisanship; Political Beliefs; Survey Responses; Expressive Behavior
JEL Codes: H0; H1
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Partisanship (D72) | Perception of factual information (D83) |
| Partisan divergence in beliefs (D72) | Expressive behavior (D91) |
| Financial incentives (M52) | Partisan divergence in survey responses (D79) |