Subtle primes of in-group and out-group affiliation change votes in a large scale field experiment.
Journal
Scientific reports
ISSN: 2045-2322
Titre abrégé: Sci Rep
Pays: England
ID NLM: 101563288
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
29 12 2022
29 12 2022
Historique:
received:
06
09
2021
accepted:
12
12
2022
entrez:
29
12
2022
pubmed:
30
12
2022
medline:
3
1
2023
Statut:
epublish
Résumé
Identifying the influence of social identity over how individuals evaluate and interact with others is difficult in observational settings, prompting scholars to utilize laboratory and field experiments. These often take place in highly artificial settings or, if in the field, ask subjects to make evaluations based on little information. Here we conducted a large-scale (N = 405,179) field experiment in a real-world high-information context to test the influence of social identity. We collaborated with a popular football live score app during its poll to determine the world's best football player for the 2017-2018 season. We randomly informed users of the nationality or team affiliation of players, as opposed to just providing their names, to prime in-group status. As a result of this subtle prime, we find strong evidence of in-group favoritism based on national identity. Priming the national identity of a player increased in-group voting by 3.6% compared to receiving no information about nationality. The effect of the national identity prime is greatest among individuals reporting having a strong national identity. In contrast, we do not find evidence of in-group favoritism based on team identity. Informing individuals of players' team affiliations had no significant effect compared to not receiving any information and the effect did not vary by strength of team identity. We also find evidence of out-group derogation. Priming that a player who used to play for a user's favorite team but now plays for a rival team reduces voting for that player by between 6.1 and 6.4%.
Identifiants
pubmed: 36581664
doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-26187-x
pii: 10.1038/s41598-022-26187-x
pmc: PMC9800561
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
22526Informations de copyright
© 2022. The Author(s).
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