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Partisan Polarization in Parallel Worlds

Abstract: “Culture wars” involve the puzzling alignment of partisan identity with disparate policy positions as well as lifestyle choices and personal morality. Explanations point to deep-rooted ideological divisions, core values, moral emotions, and cognitive hardwiring. We used the “multiple worlds” experimental paradigm to test an alternative explanation based on the sensitivity of opinion cascades to the initial conditions. Two online experiments (N=4581) generated cascades by exposing participants to social influence on 20 novel political and cultural issues. Consistent with recent studies, partisan divisions in the influence condition were much larger than in the control group (without influence). The surprise is that bigger divisions indicate less predictability. An issue backed by Republicans and opposed by Democrats in one experimental “world” had the opposite outcome in another parallel world. The unpredictability suggests that what appear to be deep-rooted partisan divisions in our own world may have arisen through a tipping process that might just as easily have tipped the other way. Public awareness of this counter-intuitive possibility has the potential to encourage greater tolerance for opposing opinions.

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Data Quality in Online Surveys: The Case of Survey Trolls

Abstract: Online surveys now represent a large segment of the academic research on public attitudes and behaviors. There is widespread recognition that online surveys can be plagued lower levels of data quality than traditional survey modes, especially low levels of respondent attention that can introduce noise in survey estimates. We identify another source of measurement error: survey trolling, or mischievous responding, whereby respondents give insincere answers in an effort to be provocative or humorous. We offer a technique for identifying mischievous responding and evaluate the implications for survey research. Our analysis examines the incidence and implications of survey trolling across multiple surveys, with a particular focus on evaluating the extent to which it biases estimates of political misinformation in the American public.