OCR Event Manager - Master Calendar

Group Identity and Belief Formation: A Microfoundation of Political Polarization

Apr 9, 2026   2:00 - 3:20 pm  
317 David Kinley Hall
Sponsor
Department of Economics
Speaker
Yan Chen (University of Michigan)
E-Mail
econ@illinois.edu
Views
22
Originating Calendar
Microeconomics (SEMINARS)

Abstract: To evaluate the impact of group identity on belief formation, we conducted online experiments before and after the 2020 US presidential election. We elicit participants' beliefs about future unemployment statistics and health system rankings and provide relevant news summaries. We find that people pay money to avoid information from political outgroups and attribute lower weight to this information when updating beliefs. An intervention which unlabels information sources decreases outgroup information avoidance by 50%, with a significant impact on only  groupish participants. A debiasing intervention equalizing instrumental values of information sources reduces only universalists' WTP for a private signal. The interventions have little effect on information processing. The evidence is consistent with a source-utility channel contributing to polarization.

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