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"Choice Blindness" Can Transform Conservatives Into Liberals - and Vice Versa
ananyo writes "When U.S. presidential candidate Mitt Romney said last year that he was not even going to try to reach 47% of the US electorate, and that he would focus on the 5–10% thought to be floating voters, he was articulating a commonly held opinion: that most voters are locked in to their ideological party loyalty. But Lars Hall, a cognitive scientist at Lund University in Sweden, knew better. When Hall and his colleagues tested the rigidity of people's political attitudes and voting intentions during Sweden's 2010 general election, they discovered that loyalty was malleable: nearly half of all voters were open to changing their minds. Hall's group polled 162 voters during the final weeks of the election campaign, asking them which of two opposing political coalitions — conservative or social democrat/green — they intended to vote for. The researchers also asked voters to rate where they stood on 12 key political issues, including tax rates and nuclear power. The person conducting the experiment secretly filled in an identical survey with the reverse of the voter's answers, and used sleight-of-hand to exchange the answer sheets, placing the voter in the opposite political camp. The researcher invited the voter to give reasons for their manipulated opinions, then summarized their score to give a probable political affiliation and asked again who they intended to vote for. On the basis of the manipulated score, 10% of the subjects switched their voting intentions, from right to left wing or vice versa. Another 19% changed from firm support of their preferred coalition to undecided. A further 18% had been undecided before the survey, indicating that as many as 47% of the electorate were open to changing their minds, in sharp contrast to the 10% of voters identified as undecided in Swedish polls at the time (research paper). Hall has used a similar sleight of hand before to show that our moral compass can often be easily reversed."
One thing I've noticed (read: pure anecdote) is that most people who are enthusiastic about their party don't behave much differently from sports fans of opposing teams. It doesn't really matter what their side does, what matters is which letter wins the game. Even on Slashdot I've confronted a few people who say "well my side never does x abhorrent behavior" when all of ten seconds worth of Google found the opposite.
Personally I simply avoid registering to vote because all that happens is I get calls from people telling me to vote for their guy and they can't really explain why. For example I got a call from somebody on Matt Salmon's team telling me that they would repeal Obama Care, and lower medical costs through deregulation. Being a libertarian, that is music to my ears because I know from experience that red tape does raise costs in the medical field significantly. However when I asked what he would deregulate and how that would help, he didn't even know. But he expects me to vote for his guy anyways.
No thanks. I'd only register to vote if there was actually a significant movement to balance the budget and prevent what I see as an otherwise inevitable catastrophic economic collapse. I don't think that will ever happen though. Once you add social entitlements, no matter how unsustainable or unaffordable, they're basically impossible to get rid of. The best you can do is hedge your assets (gold is a horrible idea BTW) and grab your ankles.
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Most people don't know any of the science behind nuclear power, global warming, environmental protection, or race relations. Whether it's Democrats or Republicans, their beliefs about these subjects are based purely on what their favorite political personality tells them. So if you try to justify their position, they start spouting nonsense, and they probably don't remember what their position is if they are on their own to make a choice.
As for the presidential candidates, in practice, they were interchangeable: both Obama and Romney were bent on violating the Constitution, civil liberties, and handing large amounts of money to their buddies and constituents, at the cost of everybody else. We happened to get Obama, and he has delivered on that program "beautifully". Obama's pride and overconfidence makes it even easier for special interest groups to pull his strings than Bush's simplicity.
Sorry but us Americans are stubborn assholes who dont care about the issues all we care about is what the party says on the issue.
Hi. I'm an American too. We aren't all stubborn assholes. Case in point, I tracked down this poster and told a truck full of passing conservatives that a single mother lived at the poster's home address and was collecting welfare. I don't think we'll be seeing him after tonight.
Somewhat more seriously though, to the international community: We're sick of the two-party system too. It's a joke; Nobody really feels their interests are well-represented by either party. As a result, we've taken to discussing politics like it's a sporting event -- we bet on which team will win, scream and dance around in our underwear in front of the TV during the national debates, and get drunk and then either cry, or riot, when our team wins. Because while our political system is shit, we still really, really enjoy watching people we don't like fail. Take Romney for example -- his epic failure kept me happy (and warm!) through most of the frigid Midwestern winter.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Australia came up with a much more strict gun control laws after a massacre at a place called Newtown.
The result is that they have a much lower rate of gun violence compared to before the gun control laws.
Gun control works.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
What special privileges do you suppose liberals are trying to get for gays.
"Hate Crime" legislation comes to mind. Typical "liberal" bullshit. They completely choke on solutions to the actual problems (I will ever maintain that there's no legitimate objection to gay marriage), but give them half a chance and they'll make another group of delicate snowflakes who need to be "protected".
"All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others," indeed.
I think that it did work in the past and will continue to work very short term into the future. I just think it will be ineffective in 5-10 years and so a different solution must be found. If we try to solve the problem entirely with gun control then all the causes of violence will remain but the availability of guns via 3D printing will increase.
Computer modeling for biotech drug manufacturing is HARD!
He does have a bit of a point. Who would want to vote for the party who filibustered the civil rights act?
From 1967 to 2009 they had a KKK leader as a primary leader of their party. (Byrd's first elected office was when he was elected to a KKK leadership position.)
Regarding women, they voted 170-85 against women's right to vote.
So he's got a point, who would want to vote for that party, the Democrats? I'd sure go with the party that voted FOR women's rights (Republicans 81-34 for women's right to vote , 1915), the party who pushed the Civil Rights Act through against the democrat filibuster, etc.
I haven't watched cable TV in a long time now, and lost interest in politics (mostly) over a year ago, but as I recall Fox didn't really do that. In fact, most of the stuff I heard about Fox didn't even end up being true. They follow the same format as everybody else from what I could determine. They have soft news and hard news. Slashdot actually had an article not long ago that found MSNBC is far more biased than Fox, hell Chris Matthews basically calls everybody a racist every other day, but nobody ever talks about that.
I think the major beef that people have with Fox news is that its soft news leans right whereas the rest lean left. So naturally, it catches the most heat.
From my perspective, either they are all doing that or they all aren't. And you're basically falling into the same trap that I'm talking about. You're pitching them on one side and rooting for the other side.
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