Summary of a new study on out-group hate (and how to fix it)

I was wrong. This study actually looks solid, with pre-registration and good sample-sizes. 

Also, they made all the code and datasets available! 

https://osf.io/gzxke/files/osfstorage

I should make it clear that these practices are very much not common in any field and greatly exceeded my expectations. I applaud the authors for making the extra effort and strongly encourage other researchers to follow in their footsteps.

My yell-at-people-on-the-internet-for-doing-statistics-wrong senses are still tingling, though, for reasons I don't understand. It's probably nothing, but maybe it's foreshadowing.

A full analysis will follow. Eventually.

Upvoted for preregistration.  

These may be reasonable heuristics, given how much research doesn't replicate. But why do you consider this finding "politically useful"? The study says that this behavior happens regardless of political affiliation, so it's not like those studies that say "<my political opponents> are <dumb / naive / racist>" and which then serve as ammunition against the other side.

Also, kudos to pre-registering your predictions!

I asked one of the authors about this. She acknowledged that some respondants do say they'd like to see less money in politics. However, she also pointed out that in the win/win scenario, people choose to have their own party gain a dollar and leave the opposition alone, rather than leaving their own side alone and subtracting $1 from the opposition. So people are not consistently choosing to decrease the amount of money in politics. This makes respondant claims that this was their objective in the lose-lose scenario sound like post-hoc rationalizations to me. 
 

In the win-win condition, which serves as an experimental control to conceptually replicate prior findings (5, 6), both options altered the donation in ways that were favorable given the participant’s stated attitude: either add $1 to the donation going to the organization on their side or subtract $1 from the donation going to the organization on the opposing side.

After thinking about this more, I actually think there is a counter to that. The fifth study showed that people are really conforming to a norm, real or imagined. If they were really acting on their own individual preferences, then it seems like telling them their own side thinks it's important not to lose money, even though the other side gains money, ought not to be able to so thoroughly alter the choices they make.

What we probably need is an explanation for:

1. Why people conform so strongly to the perceived norm.
2. Why people imagine the norm is to sacrifice money for your own side to keep money out of the hands of the opponents.

The explanation for (1) seems to be an overriding desire to maintain their sense of political identity. But the explanation for (2) might be that, all else equal, they think it's sensible to diminish the amount of money wasted on politics. But if (1) dominates, then if they think the norm is to put money into politics, they'll do that instead.

I agree, I think that is an important alternative explanation that AFAIK the authors did not adequately explore.

I thought about that, but I think it doesn't quite fit the details of the study. For example, in Study 1, they asked people to choose between two options:

1. Give opponents $1, no effect on you.
2. Your side loses $1, no effect on opponents.

The second option was much more popular, even though it involved taking a loss. So it seems to me that, if anything, loss aversion makes these results even more surprising. What do you think?

For your proposed model to work, we have to assume that respondants think their own side is better at turning money into electoral victory, which they can then use to try and achieve concrete aims, but their opponents are able to turn money donated to their political campaign directly into concrete aims, without needing to achieve political victory. For example, the Democrats need to win the presidency to pass a law banning homophobic curriculums in the schools and thereby modestly advance the cause of gay rights, but the Republicans can spend campaign money directly on extremely effective homophobic TV advertising that has as major effect on stoking homophobia, no electoral victory required.

However, this still seems like a scenario in which the respondant is convinced that their opponent can spend the money more effectively than their own party. The study authors showed that even believing their own party spends money more effectively than the opposition doesn't persuade people by default to protect their own donation while allowing the opposition an additional $1. So I don't think your hypothesis fits the findings of the study, insofar as we can extrapolate.

Can you say where exactly you found the "I'm sick of the big parties and their interference" quote? I am having trouble finding it, not sure if you meant study 2 or supplementary 2 by S2.

However, these hypotheses are directly contradicted by the results of the "win-win" condition, where participants were given the ability to either give to their own side or remove money from the opposition.

I would argue this is a simple stealing is bad heuristic. I would also generally expect subtraction to anger the enemy and cause them stab more kittens.

It's just supposed to represent a thought process someone might go through as an illustrative example, not to be factually accurate. Sorry that wasn't clear!