11–20 of 173 posts
Interesting finding. One of the problems with voting is that there is no incentive or a very small incentive to choose the candidate with the best policies, because the chance of your vote making a difference is so small. Therefore people vote for a candidate that makes them feel good, rather than a competent one. This is arguably the cause of many bad policies. Caplan discusses this issue in his book 'The Myth of th…
If someone asks me my opinion about something I'm much more likely to say what I know they want to hear if they offer to pay me to say that, and I'm less likely to debate with them instead. If they aren't paying me, I'm more likely to say what I really think.
Interesting finding. One of the problems with voting is that there is no incentive or a very small incentive to choose the candidate with the best policies, because the chance of your vote making a difference is so small. Therefore people vote for a candidate that makes them feel good, rather than a competent one. This is arguably the cause of many bad policies. Caplan discusses this issue in his book 'The Myth of th…
Counterpoint: http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/rati... This paper argues that voting for social reasons ("this result will benefit society") is sensible even in large elections. The value depends on the percent turnout, but not on population size.
Interestingly, fontback's hypothesis is exactly how they modeled the choice, with a financial incentive plus some "psychological incentive"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They performed this with and without that payment. "This paper reports results from two novel experiments designed to distinguish sincere from expressive partisan differences in responses to factual questions. In both experiments, all subjects were asked factual questions, but some were given financial incentives to answer correctly. ... In our second experiment, we therefore implement a treatment in which subjects w…
But if there's no payout then there's no incentive to say don't know. Whereas if there is a payout then the optimal strategy is clearly "dont know", assuming equal payouts for correct and dont know. Why would you take the risk of being wrong?
> The amount paid for “don’t know” responses was also assigned randomly, and was a fraction of the amount offered for a correct response: 20% of the payment for a correct response with probability .33, 25% with probability .33, and 33% with probability .33.
wonder if there's a way to tease out what I believe versus what I think you want to hear.
"I think want me to say the unemployment rate is X, so I'll select that, but I believe the unemployment rate is actually Y"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They performed this with and without that payment. "This paper reports results from two novel experiments designed to distinguish sincere from expressive partisan differences in responses to factual questions. In both experiments, all subjects were asked factual questions, but some were given financial incentives to answer correctly. ... In our second experiment, we therefore implement a treatment in which subjects w…
But if there's no payout then there's no incentive to say don't know. Whereas if there is a payout then the optimal strategy is clearly "dont know", assuming equal payouts for correct and dont know. Why would you take the risk of being wrong?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But if there's no payout then there's no incentive to say don't know. Whereas if there is a payout then the optimal strategy is clearly "dont know", assuming equal payouts for correct and dont know. Why would you take the risk of being wrong?
Quote from paper: > The amount paid for “don’t know” responses was also assigned randomly, and was a fraction of the amount offered for a correct response: 20% of the payment for a correct response with probability .33, 25% with probability .33, and 33% with probability .33.
Qwrusz's comment may be relevant here.
"The experiments show that small payments for correct and "don't know" responses sharply diminish the gap between Democrats and Republicans in responses to "partisan" factual question"
This study fails to impress me as anyone with some intelligence would always pick "don't know" since it's a guaranteed payment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Counterpoint: http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/rati... This paper argues that voting for social reasons ("this result will benefit society") is sensible even in large elections. The value depends on the percent turnout, but not on population size.
Voting theory models rational actors, not actual people. Interestingly, fontback's hypothesis is exactly how they modeled the choice, with a financial incentive plus some "psychological incentive"