Dr. Eugen Dimant is an Associate Professor of Practice in Behavioral & Decision Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a fellow in both the Behavioral and Decision Sciences Program and the Center for Social Norms and Behavioral Dynamics at the University of Pennsylvania, a collaborator at the Behavior Change for Good Initiative (BCFG) at Wharton & a Network Fellow at CESifo.
He works primarily in the field of experimental behavioral economics, particularly focusing on behavioral ethics and behavior change. His recent research explores how social norms and nudges can impact our beliefs in ways that benefit us personally. This work also considers how these elements can influence the spread of both pro- and anti-social behavior within individual and group contexts, and how they can exacerbate societal polarization. Another area that he is actively exploring relates to the interplay between corruption, terrorism, and migration.
“Hate Trumps Love: The Impact of Political Polarization on Social Preferences.” Management Science 70, no. 1 (2023): 1-31.
Exhibiting altruism toward and cooperativeness with others is a key ingredient for successful work relationships and managerial decision making. Rising political polarization creates a hazard because it ruptures this fabric and impedes the interaction of employees, especially across political isles. This paper’s focus is to examine various behavioral-, belief-, and norm-based layers of (non)strategic decision making that are plausibly affected by polarization. I quantify this phenomenon via five preregistered studies in the context of Donald J. Trump, comprising 15 well-powered behavioral experiments and a diverse set of over 8,600 participants. To capture the pervasiveness of polarization, I contrast the findings with various political and nonpolitical identities. Overall, I consistently document strong heterogeneous effects: ingroup-love occurs in the perceptional domain (how close one feels toward others), whereas outgroup-hate occurs in the behavioral domain (how one helps/harms/cooperates with others). The rich setting also enables me to examine the mechanisms of observed intergroup conflict, which can be attributed to one’s grim expectations regarding cooperativeness of the opposing faction, rather than one’s actual unwillingness to cooperate. For the first time, the paper also tests whether popular behavioral interventions (defaults and norm-nudges) can reduce the detrimental impact of polarization in the contexts studied here. The tested interventions improve prosociality but are ineffective in closing the polarization gap.