IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uea/aepppr/2012_53.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Political Influence of Peer Groups: Experimental Evidence from the Classroom

Author

Listed:
  • Camila Campos

    (Insper)

  • Sean Hargreaves Heap

    (King's College London)

  • Fernanda L L de Leon

    (University of East Anglia)

Abstract

People who belong to the same group often behave alike. Is this because people with similar preferences naturally associate with each other or because group dynamics cause individual preferences and/or the information that they have to converge? This is the question that we address with a natural experiment. We focus on the possible influence of peers on two types of individual political behaviour: political identification on a left-right spectrum and political engagement. We find no evidence that peer political identification affects individual identification. But we do find that peer engagement affects individual engagement, individual political knowledge and political identification among those who are initially least engaged. We argue this (and other evidence) is most likely to arise from peer effects on the information that individuals have and not their preferences.

Suggested Citation

  • Camila Campos & Sean Hargreaves Heap & Fernanda L L de Leon, 2013. "The Political Influence of Peer Groups: Experimental Evidence from the Classroom," University of East Anglia Applied and Financial Economics Working Paper Series 053, School of Economics, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
  • Handle: RePEc:uea:aepppr:2012_53
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ueaeco.github.io/working-papers/papers/afe/UEA-AFE-053.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Patricia Funk, 2010. "Social Incentives and Voter Turnout: Evidence from the Swiss Mail Ballot System," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 8(5), pages 1077-1103, September.
    2. Carrell, Scott E. & Hoekstra, Mark & West, James E., 2011. "Is poor fitness contagious?: Evidence from randomly assigned friends," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7-8), pages 657-663, August.
    3. Angela A. Hung & Charles R. Plott, 2001. "Information Cascades: Replication and an Extension to Majority Rule and Conformity-Rewarding Institutions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1508-1520, December.
    4. Jonathan Guryan & Kory Kroft & Matthew J. Notowidigdo, 2009. "Peer Effects in the Workplace: Evidence from Random Groupings in Professional Golf Tournaments," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(4), pages 34-68, October.
    5. Nickerson, David W., 2008. "Is Voting Contagious? Evidence from Two Field Experiments," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 102(1), pages 49-57, February.
    6. Matthew Gentzkow, 2006. "Television and Voter Turnout," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(3), pages 931-972.
    7. Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 991-1013, September.
    8. David S. Lyle, 2007. "Estimating and Interpreting Peer and Role Model Effects from Randomly Assigned Social Groups at West Point," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(2), pages 289-299, May.
    9. David S. Lyle, 2009. "The Effects of Peer Group Heterogeneity on the Production of Human Capital at West Point," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(4), pages 69-84, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nikolaj Harmon & Raymond Fisman & Emir Kamenica, 2018. "Peer Effects in Legislative Voting," Boston University - Department of Economics - Working Papers Series dp-304, Boston University - Department of Economics.
    2. Nikolaj Harmon & Raymond Fisman & Emir Kamenica, 2019. "Peer Effects in Legislative Voting," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(4), pages 156-180, October.

    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. Camila F. S. Campos & Shaun Hargreaves Heap & Fernanda Leite Lopez de Leon, 2017. "The political influence of peer groups: experimental evidence in the classroom," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 69(4), pages 963-985.
    2. Michael Babington & Sebastian J. Goerg & Carl Kitchens, 2020. "Do Tournaments With Superstars Encourage or Discourage Competition?," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 21(1), pages 44-63, January.
    3. Stephen Gibbons & Shqiponja Telhaj, 2016. "Peer Effects: Evidence from Secondary School Transition in England," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 78(4), pages 548-575, August.
    4. Kamei, Kenju & Ashworth, John, 2023. "Peer learning in teams and work performance: Evidence from a randomized field experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 207(C), pages 413-432.
    5. Kofoed, Michael S. & Jones, Todd R., 2023. "First Generation College Students and Peer Effects," IZA Discussion Papers 16198, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Brady, Ryan R. & Insler, Michael A. & Rahman, Ahmed S., 2017. "Bad Company: Understanding negative peer effects in college achievement," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 144-168.
    7. Marcel Fafchamps & Di Mo, 2018. "Peer effects in computer assisted learning: evidence from a randomized experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 21(2), pages 355-382, June.
    8. Huang, Lingbo & Xiao, Erte, 2021. "Peer effects in public support for Pigouvian taxation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 187(C), pages 192-204.
    9. Brady, Ryan & Insler, Michael & Rahman, Ahmed, 2015. "Bad Company: Reconciling Negative Peer Effects in College Achievement," MPRA Paper 68354, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Schreiner, Nicolas, 2021. "Changes in Well-Being Around Elections," Working papers 2021/03, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    11. Peters, Jörg & Langbein, Jörg & Roberts, Gareth, 2016. "Policy evaluation, randomized controlled trials, and external validity—A systematic review," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 51-54.
    12. Petra Thiemann, 2022. "The Persistent Effects of Short-Term Peer Groups on Performance: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Higher Education," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(2), pages 1131-1148, February.
    13. repec:oxf:wpaper:wps/2014-05 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Bet Caeyers, 2014. "Exclusion bias in empirical social interaction models: causes, consequences and solutions," CSAE Working Paper Series 2014-05, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    15. Lépine, Andrea & Estevan, Fernanda, 2021. "Do ability peer effects matter for academic and labor market outcomes?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    16. León, Gianmarco, 2017. "Turnout, political preferences and information: Experimental evidence from Peru," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 56-71.
    17. Alan Gerber & Mitchell Hoffman & John Morgan & Collin Raymond, 2020. "One in a Million: Field Experiments on Perceived Closeness of the Election and Voter Turnout," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 287-325, July.
    18. Jones, Todd R. & Kofoed, Michael S., 2020. "Do peers influence occupational preferences? Evidence from randomly-assigned peer groups at West Point," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    19. Grohmann, Antonia Charlotte & Sakha, Sahra, 2015. "The Effect of Peer Observation on the Consumption of Temptation Goods: Experimental Evidence," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 113084, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    20. Hoffman, Mitchell & León, Gianmarco & Lombardi, María, 2017. "Compulsory voting, turnout, and government spending: Evidence from Austria," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 103-115.
    21. David S. Lyle, 2009. "The Effects of Peer Group Heterogeneity on the Production of Human Capital at West Point," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(4), pages 69-84, October.

    More about this item

    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:uea:aepppr:2012_53. 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: Cara Liggins (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/esueauk.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.