How Voter Shortsightedness Skews Elections

sciencehabit writes "'Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?' Ronald Reagan's famous question in the U.S. presidential election of 1980 is generally a good yardstick for picking a candidate, or at least for judging a leader's economic policies. But few voters follow it. Instead, they are swayed by economic swings in the months leading up to the election, often ignoring the larger trends. Why are we so shortsighted? A psychological study of voting behavior suggests an answer and points to a simple fix. ... Healy and Lenz challenged their subjects to evaluate hypothetical governments based on slightly varying information. For example, some received information expressed as yearly income while others received the same information expressed as a yearly growth rate. The same information in a plot of steadily increasing average personal income over 3 years—$32,400, $33,100, $33,800—can also be expressed as a steadily decreasing rate of growth—3%, 2.3%, 2.1%. That did the trick. Just changing the units of the data was enough to cure voter fickleness. When economic trends were expressed as yearly income rather than rates of change, the subjects made accurate judgments. But if the same information was expressed as a change over time—the bias reappeared."

Comments

Re:Not quite that

[damn_registrars]

In the end you're still voting for a candidate that will harm you

In the US, there is no choice. We have a choice between conservative candidates, and incredibly conservative candidates. Our current president is the most conservative president our country has ever had, and we will see candidates in 2016 who will probably push to be even more conservative.

I just settle for who will do the least harm to my future, my career, and my well being.

Honestly I'm not even bothering with the elections anymore.

You can make that choice if you want. You have the right to not vote if you want, but don't complain about what the politicians are doing if you take no part in selecting them.

Re:dont blame the voters

[allaunjsiIverfox2]

People don't expect the news to lie

Then they're stupid.