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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."
News at 10
are you better off now than you were 4 years ago
that drives my selection. The matter for me is closer to
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
It's shocking how pervasive this axiom is throughout life.
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People are stupid and are unqualified to vote.
The downside of this, is if people didn't have the vote then very, very evil people would take control.
So think of it this way, we get some dumb leaders; we get some idiotic leaders; we get some bad legislation and we get some self defeating legislation, BUT we can turn around and push it out and replace it with something else.
Under an evil dictator we're stuck until the dictator dooms us with one of the classic blunders -- getting involved in a land war in Asia.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Decreasing growth means that inflation will eventually outpace wage growth, so greater income is not equal to more buying power.
I miss the days when enough of slashdot knew c syntax that I could just write !=
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Most voters stick with long-standing ideals that they think will work long-term -- most people will poll to the same party over and over. Only a small percentage of people that are willing to break with their party could be influenced this way (unless their party was doing something particularly silly near a vote). Swing voters matter, of course, but this article generalizes something that is not generally true.
"'If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers."
Set your phasers on "funky"!
None of us is as dumb as all of us.
But that's exactly what this sort of thing shows is not the case! The data about cognitive biases is robust. This one is a variation of the framing effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framing_effect_(psychology) and the data shows that even smart people as individuals don't do well on such tests. We are all as individuals subject to cognitive biases. What's even worse is that knowing about cognitive biases can even be counterproductive http://lesswrong.com/lw/he/knowing_about_biases_can_hurt_people/ because we are much more prone to see them in other people than in ourselves even though we're all subject to them.
The voters make decisions based on the information they are fed. Not the information they *GATHER* by and large, because that is an active process. Most people seem to tune in to the media outlets that favor their political leanings, which are driven by the corporate and special interests that own these media empires. Whether your corporation is Fox, MSNBC, or American Public Media, people are really being spoon-fed an official line that serves somebody else's self-interest, packaged in a way that makes them feel like this media empire puts its own self-interest below that of its audience.
Part of the problem is that news is a form of entertainment, and in the USA at least, news outlets are legally allowed to deliberately lie to you. Journalists are hypnotists, plain and simple, and if they do tell the truth it is because it happens to align with their employers' interests that day.
If people were given the tools to understand this game during their formative years, they might be more willing to take the time to independently research the issues they care about, but even this is a stretch. After a long day at the office, most folks want to just sort of zonk out and, tired and often filled with alcohol, the news is turned on and they absorb the day's "news" without a single functioning critical thought neuron in action.
If I were naive I would suggest some legislative fix to this but knowing how the legislative process works, and its typical results, this would almost inevitably lead to a much worse scenario than that which is being played out right now.
A good portion of the voting populace "informs" themselves by switching channels and soaking up whatever the media is feeding them. It's very easy to become blindsided from the real issues by network ratings, paid-for advertising and just plain old lies.
You have to do some footwork to educate yourself because the elections always come down to one thing: Which end of the sh#t sandwich do you want to take a bite from? There has never a "perfect" choice. People are lazy, don't want to do the work and rely on network television to make their choices for them. That's how it works. Both sides know it and capitalize on it.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
A mind is a terrible thing to waste, so fill it with expectations based on Wall Street's paradigm and see what happens. We've been inundated with unrealistic thinking ever since WWII, McCarthy and neoliberal economics took center stage in your mythology. Why would I expect voter's behavior to differ from that of those who claim that the economy is run by the gub'ment?
If you have a Keen interest if a different viewpoint, you should look into an alternative explanation.
Indeed!
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
You're presuming that people usually vote and/or act as individuals. I would argue that they do not. There's clearly a herd mentality, especially when it comes to voting. Why else would so many people develop an 'us versus them' attitude instead of 'me versus them.'
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For example, we mostly agree that anyone can bed anyone over the legal age under the law moral or not, because its a personal matter
We all mostly agree that we should be able to form contracts with anyone we wish to form a contract. It does not matter if your business partner is a woman or man, gay or not
So why then in the gay marriage issue do people get in a huff being pro gay marriage or anti-gay marriage?
The framing around "marriage" and not "freedom to form contracts" ferments passionate disagreement!!!
In truth, the government should not have a special contract category called marriage. Contracts are contracts, make them how you like, to whom you like.
Libertarian perspectives can cut through the crap sometimes. Some might find this funny coming from me over the last days, but that is because my perspective hasn't truly been appreciated.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
The fact that a large majority of voters make judgments on what happens in the immediate past (i.e. 3-4 months) prior to an election, rather than the entire term of office (2, 4, or 6 years for various US Congress/Presidents) is well documented, so no surprise here.
Much of that has to do with the difficulty virtually all people have distilling a complex, hugely multivariant problem, into easily understood metrics and views. That's not going to change, because even a super genius is going to only be able to accurately remember a half-dozen major points, while there may be as many as several DOZEN relevant metrics/issues that you probably can consider important.
The proposed solution in the paper is yet another form of a simplification and lie, NOT a real solution. The simple answer is that I see no indication that the claimed "yearly growth" rate is any more accurate than the absolute income. Do the grow rates take into account inflation? (I see no indication they do) What about changes in the job market over those years? What about overall economic indicators? I.e. if the average income managed to grow ANY over the period 2007-2009 (in the middle of the most severe recession in 80 years), then that a huge accomplishment vs say merely keeping up with inflation in 2003. The authors are merely substituting one questionably useful statistic with another (of the same dubious relevance).
Never trust someone selling you a simple numerical answer to a complex problem. Politicians and Statisticians are both extremely adept at contriving lots of meaning from simple numbers. There's a reason this post is titled the way it is.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
I always thought the question "'Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?" was flawed. In my case the answer is Yes, I am better off than I was four years ago but it has nothing to do with the current president. In my case it was a lot of hard work, an advanced degree (which I paid for myself), and a lovely new wife that got me ahead over the last four years. We could have elected Donald Trump, Don King, or Kang and Kodos and I would more than likely be in the exact same position I am now.
Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago is a horrible metric to judge politicians. Policies take a while to implement so a really bad first year that you've inherited could overwhelm the next 33.5 months. The economic cycle can overpower policies anyway. And there are other issues besides personal well-being which seems to over-focus on economic issues. 4 years is both too arbitrary a time frame and too short of a time frame.
It does seem pretty silly that you can't be married to multiple people (although that's not my cup of tea, one nightmare at a time is quite enough for me...) doesn't it?
I mean, if each member is aware of previously existing contracts, who cares how many you have?
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The expected return from doing any research about the person they're voting for is generally less than the cost of doing the research.
Besides which, when all you're given is a choice between Obama and Romney, what difference would it make?
I always vote for the candidate who has the nicest smile and mentions God the most.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Ironically, income for most Americans has not increased since Reagan became President.
It is surprising that cutting taxes and reducing regulations for corporations and the wealthy, while undermining unions and cutting government services to everyone else, results in the wealthy getting wealthier and the rest standing still. Who could have imagined such an outcome?
When will the " trickle down" that Reagan promised start happening? I feel like it could be any day now.
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.
I'm not sure why they say that it "cured" voter fickleness. First of all, it seems to me that in both cases, voters are going along with the picture being painted by the statistics provided. You say, "income continues to rise," and it sounds good. You say, "income growth is slowing," and it sounds bad. The person responding to these statements isn't showing better judgement when they hear one statistic vs another. In both cases, they're dealing with the information uncritically. Outside of any context, it's not even clear which statistic provides a more accurate picture of the economic landscape.
Second, if the 'bias'-- which I'm not sure why it is a bias-- reappears when you provide different information, then it means that the voters continue to be 'fickle'.
Neither politicians nor big media will do anything to solve it, they need that people keeps being dumb and manipulable, so they keep voting/buying/not complaining/etc, even if the country have no future that way. Is up to the people to try to educate themselves and others to know, recognize and try to avoid their own cognitive biases, because those are exploited every day.
the researchers themselves dont...from the abstract:
blame the candidates and the news media...both are obviously not doing their jobs.
candidates, because...holy crap they're supposed to be *running* for office. they can't blame others for everything...they are responsible for how they present their case.
news media...obviously idiots. If you want to call people stupid, call ***NEWS PRODUCERS*** stupid fucking idiots. You can thrown in the TV company executives in there too. They have *no idea* what they are doing in regards to the 4th Estate & informing the populace.
I have to fault SoulSkill & all nerds here as well. Its a cop out to say "all people are idiots" as a solution or explanation to every problem. It's reductive and unworthy of our industry. Blaming the user by default *hurts our industry* because it alienates us from the users, and from our own work.
Systems need correction. Blaming the people the system is designed to serve when a feedback loop occurs is illogical!
Thank you Dave Raggett
Let me play devil's advocate here. While we can ascribe that to "dumb voter shortsightedness", wouldn't it also be true to say that if you can ascribe economic performance to a president at all, their effect on things would be much more heavily weighted towards the recent past anyway?
Early term performance would likely be out of their hands, and my assumption would be that they want to get reelected and would try hard to eke out some benefit before election season. If you can't bring out the big performance before the election, perhaps you don't have anything to offer.
Of course, imagining that your choice of president has a greater effect on your wellbeing than state and local elections or larger economic trends is a bit weird to me anyway.
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."
That's only half the problem. The other half is the shortsightedness of those elected.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
and a lovely new wife that got me ahead over the last four years.
Apropos flawed questions... pardon my curiosity, but... what did you do with the old one?
(grin)
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Yeah, community where people have multiple wives and then children will have serious genetic issues in just a couple of generations. So there is a reason for not allowing it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Umm, there are many cultures with polygamy.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
A person can indeed be smart, but the number of people who actually are smart is absolutely minuscule.
Yeah, community where people have multiple wives and then children will have serious genetic issues in just a couple of generations.
I see no reason that that would be the case, but I really couldn't care less. If people choose to do such things, it's their choice.
So there is a reason for not allowing it.
So, then, you are in favor of restricting the freedom of consenting people in exchange for safety. How brave and free you must be.
doh
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Are you sure you're not confusing polygamy with incest? Polygamy has been the dominant system throughout human history. It is only sort of recently that monogamy is gaining in popularity.
The traditional cynical way of finishing the thought is that it's not about performance, it's about feelings. It does matter if he is doing well by them, he is SAYING what they want to hear.
A more analytical view is that the point itself exposes a fallacy, which is this: if you have not gained ground with your man in power, that does not mean that it is guaranteed you would have gained ground had his opponent won. The following considerations apply:
1) The opponent might have done even worse by you, or at the very least, no better.
2) Your guy might not have the power to implement what he desires.
3) Conditions have been such that neither your guy nor his opponent have any chance to fix things.
But if you put the numbers in units that people can relate to, it becomes something they can comprehend and make educated decisions.
The world is complex and ever changing, nobody can with any real confidence say what four years with the "other guy" would have been like even in retrospect. Across electrions it's almost hopeless, each president starts under completely different circumstances and the global economy, technology and science, it all changes rapidly.
It's mostly a belief in whether this administration did better or worse than the alternative(s?) and more often than not on ideology about what the "right thing" is. Could the financial recession been handled better? Would it been handled worse? Could it have been avoided in the first place? Those who lean towards left say there should have been more regulation because it's a failure of the free market. Those who lean right say the regulation and bailouts was the problem because they didn't let the free market work. Nobody can prove the other side wrong, it'd be so much easier if we ever got the true answers.
For example, it's easy to have money "right now" even for a country, just go deeper in debt. Taxes stay low, services stay high, none of those unpopular tax hikes or cutbacks. Until shit hits the fan to smaller or greater degrees, at least. All this really tells you is that you better have bread and circus the last months leading up to an election, somehow that wisdom seems ancient. You dump shit on future generations and future politicians that start with a shit economy, but as long as you can keep shoveling it in front of you it's better than dealing with it.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Sure, tribalism exists and that's also a problem. But the central issue here is framing effect, and that occurs at an individual level.
That is a perverse and nonsensical suggestive / rhetorical question. From what anyone who was paying the slightest attention in 2008 knew, one was a statist extremist with zero management experience or talent and zero willingness to work with people having diverse political views, and the other an at least half hearted libertarian-conservative with well demonstrated management experience and talent, and demonstrated willingness to work with people having diverse political views.
The two alternatives may not encompass your, or anyone's ideals, but the choice most certainly makes a large difference.
The question asked by Reagan represents a dangerously short-sighted mindset. For example, it is possible to temporarily boost economic activity by lowering taxes and interest rates and/or increasing spending, but this is not without its dangers. For example, much of the apparent prosperity of the Bush Jr. years was a result of a completely unsustainable real estate bubble. If you follow this through to its logical conclusion, you can see why budget deficits have been the rule with the economy lurching from one bubble to another.
Aside from this, Reagan and Thatcher were lucky in that the development of oilfields in the North Sea, Alaska and elsewhere helped bring about a large reduction in oil prices. This probably would have happened regardless of who was in office, but the economic boost from this made them look better than they would have otherwise.
I always vote for the candidate who has the nicest smile and mentions God the most.
How shallow. You should know that you should really vote height and the best head of hair (in the event of a height tie).
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
I think this example is more than a framing issue... the problem here is that "marriage" means different things to different people, and even more than one thing to the same person.
A better framing issue would be around, say, healthcare or speeding tickets. The arguments and framing are an exercise to the reader :)
Because if they didn't randomly send you there no one would use it.
Hold on, let me ask the NSA.
'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
explain why our government is as non functional as it is. Politicians and their wealthy backers have been at the forefront of elevating stupidity and ignorance to virtues because stupid, ignorant people are easy to manipulate. Stupid, ignorant people focus on minor things that occur mainly in the short term (I am hungry- I eat, etc.) and on single issues for which politicians and the preachers who support them can use emotional appeals to to turn out the vote.
Kill the beta. Why override my preferred fonts and font sizes with some other idiotic smaller font with lots of wasted space between lines.
I used to vote based on the height of the candidate's hair, but now it's all about whether or not I would like to have a beer with the candidate.
For example, I wanted to have a beer with Mitt Romney's hair. Man has some beautiful hair. The kind of hair that you can believe in. Nice and straight. Not kinky or well, you know.... Mitt had American hair. Hair that knows how to sing "America the Beautiful" in the language that was born in America...English.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Can you give us a rationale for this? Not seeing it.
Plato said it 2500 years ago already, humans are not be trusted with voting because they are too stupid (paraphrasing here). This seems to be still true in the US (and much of the western world). Democracy is a great and so far the best system we found, but it only really works well with an informed and educated (and rational) populous.
The Canadian courts visited this issue recently with a Mormon sect claiming that their religion required it.
They ended up ruling against it as most of the woman in the polygamous relationships were coerced into the relationship at very young ages and it also took away rights from the young males of the community as common practice was to kick most young males out at an early age due to them being competition.
As usual it is a balance of rights and while polygamy amongst consenting adults seems fine, the prevalent practice doesn't, at least in Bountiful BC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Then where **do** they get their information?
Let's hear it. List it out. Explain an alternative.
I am open to what you have to say but I know that whatever you say will most likely have the government, a private corporation, and/or the 'news media' involved in how you obtain it in some way.
All 3 of those would get the standard trolling response on /. of, "...pssht...you trust X? your an idiot"
(X being govt, biz, or media)
So stop the nonstop counterpoint bullshit...save that for Nye/Ham...how would someone get reliable information, say, for Hurricane Sandy Relief efforts and if any corruption has turned up???
Hurricane Sandy accountability...how would i get that the 'non-idiot' way?
Thank you Dave Raggett
I'm not sure I disagree overall, Rockoon, but this point is incorrect:
Not at all true.
That's like comparing home-made preserves from your garden to those packets of jelly you get at the diner.
Like comparing a T-bone steak to a tofu-burger.
Like...
you get it...your problem is false equivalence. If you look at content, MSNBC and Fox News report on many stories that the other does not...in fact, they differ almost down the line **EXCEPT** on major national stories...even THEN...
ex: Bengazi Attack
That's just one example. The event has been covered drastically different and is a exemplar of how they differ predictably.
Also, Fox News is *not* a news channel. They do not do journalism. Fox News immitates journalism to sell advertismements, and markets itself to conservatives, so the fake news they purvey has a conservative slant...
but it's **fake journalism** with a slant...Fox News rarely reaches the standard of actual journalism
MSNBC has people like Rachel Maddow who actually report **news** in a professional journalistic presentation style & with the same rigor. Yes, it is somewhat slanted to a progressive (not 'left') standpoint...but it's actual journalism more often...much more often.
So both are slanted, one more than the other...and both report news....one much more often than the other.
bad comparison...Fox News shouldn't be mentioned in conversations about journalism!
Thank you Dave Raggett
There are good reasons why a brother and sister can't get married. There aren't good reasons why two brothers can't get married.
I'm not advocating it... all I'm saying is that saying that they can't get married is irrational.
Recently, I listened to a radiation technician go on and on that we were so lucky we didn't elect Mitt because of his 47% comment. When I asked him if the basis was true he readily admitted that Mitt was correct, but that slip-up made him look mean to the common people; sliding Obama into the nice guy column. Obama, who will then pry into the private records of his opponents (Blair Hull) and display their personal lives to the public. This is more comedic when you consider Obama's stance on his own privacy.
This is why independent central banks are such a good idea: it stops politicians cutting rates in time for the election, but not so early that inflation becomes obvious by then. It's a pity there isn't an equivalent for the deficit.
To make it even more fun, statistics are always delayed and the media report the first figures released, not usually the revisions.
I think the framing effect is expressed at an individual level, just like voting is, but the central issue is that people are easily swayed by what appears to them to be a pervasive mindset - whether framed as a loss or gain. Now, I certainly agree that the framing effect guides the presentation of almost everything today.
Personally, I blame the framing effect for Bush's second election, lol.
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Also, Fox News is *not* a news channel. They do not do journalism.
But then...
MSNBC has people like Rachel Maddow who actually report **news** in a professional journalistic presentation
If you're making this comparison, you clearly have no idea what the hell you are talking about. As you acknowledge later in your post, Maddow is "slanted to a progressive... standpoint." That's because Rachel Maddow is not a journalist, and her show isn't journalism. Her show is the moral equivalent of MSNBC's editorial page, where news organizations traditionally tell people what the news organization thinks. Maddow was hired because she reliably agrees with the MSNBC decision makers, and so is a good choice to tell people the editorial viewpoint of MSNBC.
Compare this to Fox News. At 9:00 PM, opposite Maddow's show, Fox News runs "The Kelly File," where Megyn Kelly presents the editorial viewpoint of Fox News. (Kelly is a relative newcomer to this time slot; Sean Hannity's show (also an editorial show) ran there for almost a decade.) Kelly's show is the moral equivalent of the Fox News editorial page. Like it or not, 24 hour news stations, including both Fox News and MSNBC, tend to put editorial shows on between 8:00 and 10:00 PM ET.
If you want to compare straight news coverage to straight news coverage, we can do that. If you want to compare the amount MSNBC editorial hosts lie to the amount Fox News editorial hosts lie, we can do that too. But those are comparisons of two wildly different things.
Saying Fox News is slanted because they don't have good people like Rachel Maddow (whose job it is to be slanted) is like saying a pickup truck is a bad vehicle to haul lumber because it doesn't have the acceleration of a sports car.
how the fuck did user #3526197 get my username? we can open accounts with dupe usernames??? WTF
this is globajustin #574257....the one with the mod points...and I want to know, how could a citizen get INFORMATION ON HURRICAN SANDY FUND ACCOUNTABILITY
from records of how people voted???
they can't...it requires a professional **journalist**
Thank you Dave Raggett
i have not been sent there once.
That show is crap.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Instead of blaming the voters why don't you conduct a fMRI on contestants?
Casteism
... The following considerations apply:
1) The opponent might have done even worse by you, or at the very least, no better.
2) Your guy might not have the power to implement what he desires.
3) Conditions have been such that neither your guy nor his opponent have any chance to fix things.
Add another:
4) What he said he would do, might not be possible under the laws of physics.
Example: Economics is based on the laws of thermodynamics, not human laws.