中文摘要
盲目采纳政党和有影响力人物提出的意见有时可能是有害的。聚焦于政策支持上尚未出现党派分歧的情形，我们考察能否通过鼓励事先主动接触非党派信息来阻止这种分歧的形成。为回答这一问题，我们招募了 N=851 名共和党人参与一项关于网络中立性的研究——该议题对选民而言很大程度上并不熟悉，指的是对所有互联网流量一视同仁。在一项预注册实验中，我们随机改变了以下两类信息的提供顺序： 党派信息，强调共和党的反对与民主党的支持；以及 非党派信息，参与者在其中评估了有关该政策利弊的事实性论据。尽管所提供的信息总量保持不变，我们发现先看到非党派信息模块者向一家倡导网络中立的慈善机构捐款多出 46%（p=0.001）。这一处理效应在干预数周后进行的一项模糊化追踪研究中持续存在。然而，当以民主党人样本重复主研究时，我们并未发现对捐款的影响。
Abstract
Blind adoption of opinions put forward by political parties and influential figures can sometimes be harmful. Focusing on cases where the partisan gap on policy support has not yet arisen, we investigate whether its formation can be prevented by encouraging prior active engagement with non-partisan information. To address this question, we recruited N=851 Republicans for a study about net neutrality, an issue largely unfamiliar to the electorate, which refers to equal treatment of all internet traffic. In a pre-registered experiment, we randomly changed the order in which the following two types of information were provided: (i) partisan, underscoring Republicans’ opposition and Democrats’ support, and (ii) non-partisan, where the participants evaluated factual arguments about the pros and cons of the policy. Despite holding total information constant, we find that those who saw the non-partisan block first donated 46% more to a charity advocating for net neutrality (p=0.001). The treatment effect persisted in an obfuscated follow-up study, conducted several weeks after the intervention. However, we do not find an effect on donations when repeating the main study with a sample of Democrats.