Marie-Claire Villeval (GATE)

Marie-Claire Villeval
CNRS - GATE
Personal website

Coauthors: Ritwick Banerjee and Lata Gangadharan

Abstract

Intolerance can undermine social cohesion by breeding division and animosity toward those holding different views. We study intolerance as a behavioral preference, measured by individuals' willingness to incur costs to prevent the spread of disapproved views. Using large-scale incentivized experiments with U.S. participants, we elicit this willingness across ideologically charged and neutral issues. A structural framework quantifies the intensity of intolerance and its sensitivity to ideological distance and audience size, while also examining personal and social norms. We show that this measure predicts consequential political behavior and document substantial heterogeneity across the ideological spectrum.