Political Polarization Leads to Destructive Behavior

In highly polarized societies, voters show particularly spiteful behavior towards supporters of the opposing party. The Mannheim economist Wladislaw Mill and his colleague John Morgan have provided the first experimental evidence of this behavior in their study on the society in the United States of America.

In their study, which was published in Experimental Economics, the two authors analyzed if and to which extent political polarization influences non-political behavior – in particular when it comes to finances. The data were collected before and after the presidential election in 2016, in which Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton.

The result of the study shows that the willingness to reduce the wealth of another person increases by 15 percent if the other person is voting for the opposing party. The participants were asked whether they are willing to accept a smaller amount of money in exchange for financial losses for the representative of the opposing party.

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