{"id":1604,"date":"2019-05-16T19:42:48","date_gmt":"2019-05-16T18:42:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/?p=1604"},"modified":"2020-03-17T12:18:30","modified_gmt":"2020-03-17T12:18:30","slug":"1604","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/2019\/05\/16\/1604\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Effects of the Vote of the Majority: Field-Experiment on the Brexit-Vote"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Fernanda L. Lopez de Leon<\/a>, School of Economics and Markus Bindemann<\/a>, School of Psychology, University of Kent.\u00a0Discussion paper KDPE 1905<\/a>, April\u00a02019.<\/p>\n

Non-technical summary:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The UK is scheduled to leave the EU this year. The current plans include the end of free movement. According to the Prime Minister, May, this is crucial in delivering the Brexit for which people voted in 2016. In fact, the Brexit results were widely perceived as a statement against immigration, voiced by 17 million in the country.<\/p>\n

Did the Brexit-vote change citizens\u2019 attitudes towards immigrants living in the UK?<\/p>\n

The information \u2013 inferred by the Referenda results \u2013 on the population\u2019s views about immigration could have triggered a change. Individuals could have adapted their attitudes accordingly, with an empowerment of anti-social attitudes \u2013 in line with the view that the Brexit result unearthed racism \u2013 or by refraining pre-existent views and attitudes in a way to conform to the vote of the majority.<\/p>\n

We conducted a field-experiment among 342 individuals in the South East of England in 2017-18, to test whether the Brexit vote had triggered anti-social attitudes towards immigrants.<\/p>\n

Using a computerized quiz, we provided truthful information on how the local majority voted, but on selected<\/em> constituencies. These were selected in a seemingly random way<\/em> by the computer. We made use of the fact that although most people might know that 52% voted to Leave, less is known the local support for Brexit, so we were providing novel information.<\/p>\n

For one group, the \u2018Remain\u2019, individuals were informed about referenda results for nearby constituencies whose majority voted to remain in the EU. The \u2018Leave\u2019 group, were informed about nearby constituencies where the majority voted to leave the EU, and for the control group, we informed about constituencies\u2019 demographic composition. Individuals generalised the information we gave \u2013 that the local majority voted in favour or against the UK to leave the EU \u2013 to other places in the country. Overall, individuals assigned to the \u2018Leave\u2019 condition guessed that the percentage of votes to leave the EU was 18 percentage points higher, on average, than individuals assigned to the \u2018Remain\u2019 condition.<\/p>\n

We use this experiment to investigate how the perception of a larger local support for Brexit affects individuals\u2019 extrinsic and intrinsic attitudes towards immigrants in the UK. We find no<\/em> impacts on individuals\u2019 intrinsic prejudice, measured by Implicit Association Tests \u2013 a test used in social psychology, that measures views at an unconscious level. However, we did detect effects of the information about how the majority voted \u2013 on some extrinsic attitudes towards immigrants. These are visible in self-reported views on policies and in real money allocations among participants.<\/p>\n

Some of our main findings are:<\/p>\n

We find no impact of the Brexit-vote on the demand for more restricted immigration policies<\/strong>. No effects were noticed on the demand for quotas for settlement for Europeans, quotas for settlement for non-Europeans or establishment of targets to reduce immigration. We also find no impact of the Brexit vote on the support for immigrants to live on own and separate neighbourhoods.<\/p>\n

However, the information that the majority is supporting \u2018Leave\u2019 than \u2018Remain\u2019 affected views on other policies. Participants in the \u2018Leave\u2019 condition were less likely to agree that \u201cthe NHS should be free to use for all\u201d (\u2018Leave\u2019 35.2% versus \u2018Remain\u2019 46.3%)<\/strong>. Also participants in the \u2018Leave\u2019 condition were more likely to agree with the UKIP proposed policy that \u2018Britain should end multi-lingual formatting of official documents\u2019 (\u2018Leave\u2019 25% versus \u2018Remain\u2019 14.7%).<\/p>\n

During the survey, participants were asked to split a bonus of \u00a310 between themselves and another participant. We varied the name of the recipient to be: Henry (UK name), Hans (German name) and Pawel (Polish name), and investigate whether group-biases (confirmed in case of larger donations to Henry and lower donations to Pawel or Hans) were more accentuated in the \u2018Leave\u2019 condition. Our results do not fully corroborate that. The information that the majority voted to \u2018Leave\u2019 led to lower donations in general – both to Henry and to Hans (but not to Pawel). This is more in line with the explanation that people might feel poorer and hence less generous under the thought that the majority support \u2018Leave\u2019.<\/p>\n

Overall, our findings suggest that the population infers information from referenda results that manifests as changes in attitudes. In the Brexit case, we find some evidence that immigrants are viewed in a more negative light. For example, participants in the \u2018Leave\u2019 condition were more likely to agree that \u201cforeign people in the UK who receive state support could get along without it if they tried harder\u201d (\u2018Leave\u2019 39.4% vs \u2018Remain\u2019 27.3%).<\/p>\n

You can read the complete paper here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Fernanda L. Lopez de Leon, School of Economics and Markus Bindemann, School of Psychology, University of Kent.\u00a0Discussion paper KDPE 1905, April\u00a02019. Non-technical summary: The … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37654,"featured_media":1610,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[70],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37654"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1604"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1609,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1604\/revisions\/1609"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/economics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}