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July 25, 2007
Political Science Abstract of the Day
It Feels Like We're Thinking: The Rationalizing Voter and Electoral Democracy by Larry Bartels and Christopher Achen:
The familiar image of rational electoral choice has voters weighing the competing candidates' strengths and weaknesses, calculating comparative distances in issue space, and assessing the president's management of foreign affairs and the national economy. Indeed, once or twice in a lifetime, a national or personal crisis does induce political thought. But most of the time, the voters adopt issue positions, adjust their candidate perceptions, and invent facts to rationalize decisions they have already made. The implications of this distinction between genuine thinking and its day-to-day counterfeit strike at the roots of both positive and normative theories of electoral democracy.
July 25, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
But yet the system still works amazing well. I think that is because those who grow up with good and bad presidents make basic judgments about the parties and politics that last a lifetime. This causes a backlash to stuff that doesn't work and some reinforcement to that which does. It isn't perfect and the reaction time is painfully slow, but over the long hall this system seems stable and reasonable.
Posted by: Mark | Jul 25, 2007 5:52:31 PM
Interesting (yes, I read it), but nothing new to me. This paper is reasonable proof that good leaders are capable of swaying public opinion, but that wonk-y policy arguments are not necessarily the best way to do so. Democrats take heed.
Posted by: Anthony | Jul 25, 2007 7:20:42 PM
those who grow up with good and bad presidents make basic judgments about the parties and politics that last a lifetime.
I guess the Democrats owe a debt of gratitude to Bush for handing Generation Y over to them.
Posted by: Tyro | Jul 25, 2007 10:11:17 PM
Just because people end up rationalising "unconscious decisions" to justify them in social conversation (be it at the bar, or on this blog, or when questioned by a pollster) should not lead us to conclude that no decision process occurs in their subconscious.
If, collectively, our subconscious decision process were wholly irrational and based on whim, we probably wouldn't have gotten as far as we have.
I'll readily concede that "rational policy documents" are not the quickest way to influence a "subconscious decision" but it seems clear that "rational policy argument" is part of a longer term process that can build the kind of consensus needed for rational action.
You can see this with global warming. Eventually, people's "subconscious decision apparatus" tends to start taking account of "rational evidence" presented to it, despite the mountain of emotional tactics used by the other side.
Anyway, my point is, don't get too carried away with the notion of people as just "inventing facts" to rationalise "decisions already made" in some foolish and manipulatable fashion.
Posted by: Meh | Jul 26, 2007 5:28:42 AM
"But yet the system still works amazing well."
"If, collectively, our subconscious decision process were wholly irrational and based on whim, we probably wouldn't have gotten as far as we have."
Evolution is slow. The subconscious decisions the median voter is making are optimized for a world that existed long, long, long, long ago, and the rate of change in our environment is very fast.
To the extent that we are making decisions subconsciously, we are only making the right decision by accident.
How far have we really gotten? I mean, sure, it could be worse (well, it could be worse for those of us living in the 1st world) but how much better could it be if we were the rational creatures we pretend to be.
Look at the ant. Are they reasoning? And yet, they do very well, too. I think a better explanation for the good times many in the world enjoy is that they are in a bountiful environment, for the time being.
Posted by: Chuck | Jul 26, 2007 10:30:00 AM
