The recent nonexperimental literature on social learning focuses on showing that observational learning exists, that is, individuals do indeed draw inferences by observing the actions of others. We take this literature a step further by analyzing whether individuals are Bayesian social learners....

Most studies of Bayesian updating use experimental data. This paper uses a non-experimental data source--the voter ballots of the Associated Press (AP) college football poll, a weekly subjective ranking of the top 25 teams--to test Bayes' rule as a descriptive model. I find that voters sometimes...

I present a model of affective polarization ("that both Republicans and Democrats increasingly dislike, even loathe, their opponents," Iyengar et al, 2012) via Bayesian inference. Two agents, representing the parties, repeatedly make policy choices. Each choice is based on a balance of concerns...