Lasse Stötzer

Growing political polarization is often attributed to “echo chambers” among like-minded individuals and a lack of social interactions among contrary-minded individuals. We provide quasi-experimental evidence on the effects of in-person conversations on individual-level polarization outcomes, studying a large-scale intervention in Germany that matched pairs of strangers for private face-to-face meetings to discuss divisive political issues. We find asymmetric effects: conversations with like-minded individuals caused political views to become more extreme (ideological polarization); by contrast, conversations with contrary-minded individuals did not lead to a convergence of political views, but significantly reduced negative beliefs and attitudes toward ideological out-group members (affective polarization), while also improving perceived social cohesion more generally. These effects of contrary-minded conversations seem to be driven mostly by positive experiences of interpersonal contact. 

Climate change is arguably one of the greatest challenges nowadays. Albeit the scientific consensus that human activities caused climate change, a substantial part of the population downplays or denies human responsibilities. In this registered report, we present causal evidence on a potential explanation for this discrepancy: motivated reasoning. We conducted a tailored survey experiment on a broadly representative sample of 4,000 U.S. adults to provide causal evidence on how motivated cognition shapes beliefs about climate change and influences the demand for slanted information. We further explore the role of motives on environmentally harmful behavior. Contrary to our hypotheses, we find no evidence that motivated cognition can help to explain widespread climate change denial and environmentally harmful behavior.

In this note, we provide evidence that motivated reasoning can be a source of discriminatory beliefs. We employ a representative survey experiment where we exogenously manipulate the presence of a need for justification of anti-social behavior towards an out-group. We provide causal evidence that survey participants devalue members of an out-group to justify taking away money from the group. Our results speak to a long-standing debate on the causes of racism and discrimination and suggest an important role of motivated cognition.

This paper studies the moral roots of climate policy attitudes. We fielded a survey with a representative sample in the US to study the predictive power of moral universalism in explaining heterogeneity in specific climate policy attitudes. Our results reveal that universalism significantly relates to support for various policy measures that prevail in current policy debates in most countries, including domestic policies such as a carbon tax and a green infrastructure program, as well as international policies such as international burden-sharing. This pattern is replicated in simple bystander allocation decisions where respondents are asked to decide “who should pay” to fight climate change or to mitigate the adverse consequences of global warming. Open-text elicitations further corroborate these results and identify moral universalism as a key aspect of how people reason about climate policies

briq policy monitor #1 - Germans' Willingness to Pay for Gas and Heating (English Version & German Version)

with Teodora Boneva, Armin Falk, Mark Fallak. Media Coverage: FAZ (Ausgabe 64/2022), Welt (12.04)  

briq policy monitor #2 - Sanctions on Russia, Aid to Ukraine, and Energy for Germany (English Version & German Version)

with Teodora Boneva, Armin Falk, Mark Fallak. Media Coverage: FAZ (Ausgabe 64/2022), Welt (12.04)  

briq policy monitor #3 - Germans’ willingness to act against climate change (English Version & German Version)

with Armin Falk, Mark Fallak. Media Coverage: DIE ZEIT (Nr. 36/2022)

briq policy monitor #4 - The role of social norms in the fight against climate change (English Version & German Version)

with Armin Falk, Mark Fallak. Media Coverage: DIE ZEIT (Nr. 36/2022)

briq policy monitor #5 - Climate change skepticism and excuses (English Version & German Version)

with Armin Falk, Mark Fallak. Media Coverage: DIE ZEIT (Nr. 36/2022)

briq policy monitor #6 - Germans’ concerns about climate protection (English Version & German Version)

with Armin Falk, Mark Fallak. Media Coverage: DIE ZEIT (Nr. 36/2022)