IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/jgu/wpaper/2602.html

Extreme justifications fuel polarization

Author

Listed:
  • Christiane Buschinger

    (Johannes Gutenberg University, Germany)

  • Markus Eyting

    (Johannes Gutenberg University, Germany)

  • Florian Hett

    (Johannes Gutenberg University, Germany)

  • Judd Kessler

    (The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, USA)

Abstract

How does polarization — as measured by mistreatment of political rivals — spread? In an online experiment, participants choose between splitting financial resources equally or discriminating against a supporter of the opposing political party. We vary the information subjects receive about others’ choices and justifications for discrimination. Exposure to extreme justifications for discrimination increases discrimination — particularly in a polarized environment, when many others are already discriminating — and it leads participants to adopt more extreme justifications themselves. Our findings suggest a self-reinforcing dynamic that may fuel polarization: Exposure to extreme statements increases polarization and the prevalence of extreme reasoning.

Suggested Citation

  • Christiane Buschinger & Markus Eyting & Florian Hett & Judd Kessler, 2025. "Extreme justifications fuel polarization," Working Papers 2602, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, revised Nov 2025.
    • Handle: RePEc:jgu:wpaper:2602
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://download.uni-mainz.de/RePEc/pdf/Discussion_Paper_2602.pdf
    File Function: first version, 2026
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gary Charness & Yan Chen, 2020. "Social Identity, Group Behavior, and Teams," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 12(1), pages 691-713, August.
    2. Eyting, Markus, 2022. "Why do we discriminate? The role of motivated reasoning," SAFE Working Paper Series 356, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    3. Judd B. Kessler, 2017. "Announcements of Support and Public Good Provision," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(12), pages 3760-3787, December.
    4. Scott E. Carrell & Frederick V. Malmstrom & James E. West, 2008. "Peer Effects in Academic Cheating," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 43(1).
    5. Milena Djourelova, 2023. "Persuasion through Slanted Language: Evidence from the Media Coverage of Immigration," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 113(3), pages 800-835, March.
    6. Charness, Gary & Dimant, Eugen & Gneezy, Uri & Krupka, Erin, 2025. "Experimental methods: Eliciting and measuring social norms," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 237(C).
    7. Lane, Tom & Miller, Luis & Rodriguez, Isabel, 2024. "The normative permissiveness of political partyism," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    8. Bisin, Alberto & Verdier, Thierry, 2001. "The Economics of Cultural Transmission and the Dynamics of Preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 298-319, April.
    9. Levi Boxell & Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2024. "Cross-Country Trends in Affective Polarization," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 106(2), pages 557-565, March.
    10. Gächter, Simon & Gerhards, Leonie & Nosenzo, Daniele, 2017. "The importance of peers for compliance with norms of fair sharing," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 72-86.
    11. Leonardo Bursztyn & Georgy Egorov & Stefano Fiorin, 2020. "From Extreme to Mainstream: The Erosion of Social Norms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 110(11), pages 3522-3548, November.
    12. J. Aislinn Bohren & Alex Imas & Michael Rosenberg, 2019. "The Dynamics of Discrimination: Theory and Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(10), pages 3395-3436, October.
    13. Markus Eyting, 2022. "Why do we Discriminate? The Role of Motivated Reasoning," Working Papers 2208, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    14. Bicchieri, Cristina & Dimant, Eugen & Gächter, Simon & Nosenzo, Daniele, 2022. "Social proximity and the erosion of norm compliance," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 59-72.
    15. Shanto Iyengar & Sean J. Westwood, 2015. "Fear and Loathing Across Party Lines: New Evidence on Group Polarization," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 59(3), pages 690-707, July.
    16. J. Aislinn Bohren & Kareem Haggag & Alex Imas & Devin G. Pope, 2025. "Inaccurate Statistical Discrimination: An Identification Problem," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 107(3), pages 605-620, May.
    17. Moses Shayo, 2020. "Social Identity and Economic Policy," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 12(1), pages 355-389, August.
    18. Yan Chen & Sherry Xin Li, 2009. "Group Identity and Social Preferences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(1), pages 431-457, March.
    19. Barr, Abigail & Lane, Tom & Nosenzo, Daniele, 2018. "On the social inappropriateness of discrimination," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 153-164.
    20. Dimant, Eugen, 2019. "Contagion of pro- and anti-social behavior among peers and the role of social proximity," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 66-88.
    21. M. Keith Chen & Ryne Rohla, 2017. "The Effect of Partisanship and Political Advertising on Close Family Ties," Papers 1711.10602, arXiv.org, revised Jun 2018.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Buschinger, Christiane & Eyting, Markus & Hett, Florian & Kessler, Judd B., 2025. "Extreme justifications fuel polarization," SAFE Working Paper Series 449, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    2. Bicchieri, Cristina & Dimant, Eugen & Gächter, Simon & Nosenzo, Daniele, 2022. "Social proximity and the erosion of norm compliance," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 59-72.
    3. Eugen Dimant, 2020. "Hate Trumps Love: The Impact of Political Polarization on Social Preferences," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 029, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    4. Goerg, Sebastian J. & Himmler, Oliver & König, Tobias, 2024. "Norm violations and behavioral spillovers—Evidence from the lab and the field," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    5. Deng, Xiaoyang & Wang, Tao & Xue, Lian & Yang, Shuo, 2025. "Norm enforcement on minorities: Evidence from traffic violations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 231(C).
    6. Ruzzier, Christian A. & Woo, Marcelo D., 2023. "Discrimination with inaccurate beliefs and confirmation bias," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 210(C), pages 379-390.
    7. Eugen Dimant & Michele Gelfand & Anna Hochleitner & Silvia Sonderegger, 2022. "Strategic Behavior with Tight, Loose and Polarized Norms," ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series 198, University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany.
    8. Chang, Daphne & Chen, Roy & Krupka, Erin L. & Song, Zhewei, 2024. "Do policy instruments that restrict social identity expression increase economic cooperation?," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    9. Dimant, Eugen & Galeotti, Fabio & Villeval, Marie Claire, 2024. "Motivated information acquisition and social norm formation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 167(C).
    10. Lane, Tom, 2024. "The strategic use of social identity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 224(C), pages 355-368.
    11. Eugen Dimant & Michele Gelfand & Anna Hochleitner & Silvia Sonderegger, 2023. "Strategic Behavior with Tight, Loose and Polarized Norms," CESifo Working Paper Series 10233, CESifo.
    12. Vojtech Bartos, 2025. "Breaking Bias: Pathways to Reducing Discrimination," CESifo Working Paper Series 12045, CESifo.
    13. Cristina Bicchieri & Eugen Dimant & Simon Gaechter & Daniele Nosenzo, 2020. "Observability, Social Proximity, and the Erosion of Norm Compliance," CESifo Working Paper Series 8212, CESifo.
    14. Bicchieri, Cristina & Gächter, Simon & Molleman, Lucas & Nosenzo, Daniele, 2025. "Group identity and peer effects in rule-following," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 239(C).
    15. Kai Barron & Ruth Ditlmann & Stefan Gehrig & Sebastian Schweighofer-Kodritsch, 2025. "Explicit and Implicit Belief-Based Gender Discrimination: A Hiring Experiment," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 71(2), pages 1600-1622, February.
    16. Chang, Daphne & Chen, Roy & Krupka, Erin, 2019. "Rhetoric matters: A social norms explanation for the anomaly of framing," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 158-178.
    17. Aksoy, Billur & Chadd, Ian & Koh, Boon Han, 2023. "Sexual identity, gender, and anticipated discrimination in prosocial behavior," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    18. Nicolás Ajzenman & Bruno Ferman & Pedro C. Sant’Anna, 2023. "Rooting for the Same Team: On the Interplay between Political and Social Identities in the Formation of Social Ties," Working Papers 231, Red Nacional de Investigadores en Economía (RedNIE).
    19. J. Michelle Brock & Ralph De Haas, 2023. "Discriminatory Lending: Evidence from Bankers in the Lab," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 15(2), pages 31-68, April.
    20. Carvajal, Daniel, 2024. "Exposure to diversity, social proximity and ingroup bias," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 14/2024, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C9 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments
    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
    • D9 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:jgu:wpaper:2602. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Research Unit IPP (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vlmaide.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.