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Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

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Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#41

Post by sharemywin »

madenine wrote: post #15
sharemywin wrote: post #2

wonder if there's a way to tease out what I believe versus what I think you want to hear.

Which is scary, given that the survey was about factual information. Welcome to the post-truth world I guess. "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"

If your paying me to give you the answer than I'm going to go with what I think you want me to say. If fox news approached me and offered to pay for whether I thought climate change was a hoax it would be a different answer than if the question was from Nasa.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#43

Post by tomjen3 »

ghostly_s wrote: post #35
tomjen3 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, given an incentive people will answer with what they believe the other person wants.

Presuming the subjects truly believed their first-choice answers were factual, then why would they be under the impression the researchers want to hear something else?

Because they aren't dumb? The science man want to hear the science man answer. The priest wants to hear the priest answer. Granny wants to hear you like school, the cool kids wants to hear you think it is lame.

Different people, different answers. Plenty of people learn what to say at what point pretty darn early.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#44

Post by Swizec »

gist wrote: post #34
qwrusz wrote: post #7

The small payments ranged between 17 cents and $1. But how the payment calculations were described, based on weirdly complicated raffle entry odds for gift certificates or with different questions randomly worth 25 cents or 50 cents or whatever with various probabilities. Frankly, I doubt most participants understood the payments guidance about what amount correct answers would earn them. This could imply just puttin…

Could also be a version of the Hawthorne effect. [1] In this particular case the money was a proxy which was more powerful than words meant to say 'your answer is important' or 'your vote counts'. It's actually hard for me to put in words this concept but intuitively it is what seems is happening. Ok so let's take as an example upvote/downvotes on HN. Many of us give little thought to the impact and do it impulsively…

> Nobody takes even pennies and throws them in the trashcan.

And yet they should. https://what-if.xkcd.com/22/

If you spend more than 3.6 seconds actively thinking about a penny, you value your time at less than $10/h. This comment is unfortunately self-referrential. Oops

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#45

Post by ZeroGravitas »

A related finding was that the more scientifically educated an American conservative is, the more likely they are to deny various elements of climate change. The conclusion of the researchers was that the smarter respondents knew what they were supposed to say better as well as knowing the real answer better.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#46

Post by sharemywin »

madenine wrote: post #15
sharemywin wrote: post #2

wonder if there's a way to tease out what I believe versus what I think you want to hear.

Which is scary, given that the survey was about factual information. Welcome to the post-truth world I guess. "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"

Here's another problem.

apparently there are 6 different numbers... http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/07/unemployment-rate-shows-at-5-...

So, when they ask which one are they talking about?

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#47

Post by knz »

BurningFrog wrote: post #30
philh wrote: post #10

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.

I think that agrees with Caplan. People vote for what they think is good for society, rather than personal gain. The problem (according to Caplan) is that voters don't learn how society works and how different policies would affect it. So they support policies that sound good to the uninformed. And here we are :)

> So they support policies that sound good to the uninformed. And here we are :)

It's too simplistic to put the entire blame on voters - I don't think the US has a monopoly on "low information"/uninformed/apathetic voters when compared to other OECD nations.

Surely different social expectations on the issues squeezing the middle class (health/child/education costs), a different (more partisan?) media landscape, geographic size, a polarized judicial system (who weigh in on the "culture wars", campaign financing, war against drugs etc), and deeply entrenched financial interests have some significant influence upon our elected officials.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#48

Post by _ea1k »

Fr0ntBack wrote: post #42

For all of you reading whose political knowledge is a little rusty, here is a quiz for you: https://www.buzzfeed.com/bennyjohnson/how-well-do-you-know-b... Unfortunately there is no reward for correct answers!

That doesn't strike me as being a very useful quiz. Would doing well on that really imply a stronger knowledge of policy?

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#49

Post by jessriedel »

humanrebar wrote: post #37
Fr0ntBack wrote: post #5

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…

> ...because the chance of your vote making a difference is so small. ...in national elections. Federal systems are designed with this in mind. In recent decades, more and more issues have become national issues, which erodes the influence of the individual voter. And, on top of that, if the power of the vote is ineffective, you can always move in a federal system. So the erosion of choice is compounded.

It really applies at all levels save perhaps very small town municipal elections. Whether the probability of influencing the election is 1 in 10M or 1 in 1M (or 1 in 100k) is all pretty much zero when multiplied by the change in benefits you could expect to receive.

Re: Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

#50

Post by yellowstuff »

Fr0ntBack wrote: post #42

For all of you reading whose political knowledge is a little rusty, here is a quiz for you: https://www.buzzfeed.com/bennyjohnson/how-well-do-you-know-b... Unfortunately there is no reward for correct answers!

This is more trivia than the kind of knowledge that implies understanding. Also needs an update:

> 14. How many Supreme Court justices are there?

:(

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