Online event: Maastricht Symposia 2021

Hendrik Hüning, a DEMOS scholar from the University of Hamburg (UHAM), will present his DEMOS research on opinion change at the 13th Maastricht Behavioural and Experimental Economics Symposium (M-BEES). Hüning conducted the research with DEMOS co-investigator Lydia Mechtenberg (UHAM) and Stephanie W. Wang (University of Pittsburgh). Held alongside the 6th Maastricht Behavioural Economic Policy Symposium (M-BEPS) by Maastricht University in the Netherlands, the symposium centres discussions about theories and experiments in economics. Hüning’s presentation will take place online on June 7 at 6 PM (CET). Follow the programme and more information below. Participation is free. 

By applying an experiment and analysing the results with sophisticated artificial intelligence methods, Hüning found that participants deliberating about rent control in an online chat changed their mind about the topic after reading other chat participants’ opinions and arguments. Preliminary results point to the efficacy of persuasive arguments on the Internet. 

“Increased use of arguments induces opinion change from pro to contra rent control,” Hüning explains. But that does not always hold true, he says. “The more chat partners share a subject’s standpoint, the less likely this subject becomes to change opinion, regardless of arguments used.”  

His research methods and preliminary results are a part of DEMOS research looking into effective ways of increasing democratic efficacy, an idea created by the DEMOS project to address the negative challenges associated with populist politics. Research has already shown that citizens with high levels of democratic efficacy are more likely to disagree with populist attitudes. 

Hüning and his co-authors have already discussed the potential of argument mining—a research area within the Natural Language Processing (NLP) field—for levelling up research about populism in a blog post. His conference presentation also draws upon preliminary findings of a working paper, which DEMOS has recently released.

The Symposia 

13th Maastricht Behavioural and Experimental Economics Symposium (M-BEES) & 6th Maastricht Behavioural Economic Policy Symposium (M-BEPS) 
Date: June 7 and 8 
Location: Online 
Programme: click here. 
More information and participation: available on the conference website.