Essays on beliefs and Political behavior

We provide nationally representative evidence of people’s beliefs about racial discrimination in the US and explore whether these beliefs causally affect support for pro-black policies. In an online experiment on a large, representative sample of Americans, we elicited incentivized beliefs about the extent of racial labor market discrimination against blacks. 55 percent of Americans overestimate the extent of discrimination against blacks, and Republicans are 19 percentage points less likely than Democrats to overestimate the extent of discrimination against blacks. To introduce exogenous variation in beliefs, we provided a random subset of our respondents with research evidence from a correspondence study that tested for discrimination against blacks in the labor market. Respondents strongly and persistently update their beliefs about racial discrimination in response to the information. Treated respondents who underestimate racial discrimination increase their donations to a pro-black civil rights organization by 17 percent of a standard deviation. This effect is entirely driven by non-Republicans, which means that the treatment fails to narrow Democrat–Republican differences in donations. In contrast to the donations, self-reported attitudes towards pro-black policies are generally unresponsive to new information. Our findings demonstrate that correcting people’s biases in beliefs about the extent of racial discrimination is not sufficient to reduce political polarization in support for pro-black policies. (JEL C91, D83, F22, J15