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Voters are not rational. You are a voter. You are not rational.

David Brooks has some very insightful comments about political partisanship and irrational voter behavior in his column in yesterday's New York Times, Circling the Wagons:

[According to Green, Palmquist and Schickler, authors of Partisan Hearts and Minds,] people do not choose parties by comparing platforms and then figuring out where the nation's interests lie. Drawing on a vast range of data, these political scientists argue that party attachment is more like attachment to a religious denomination or a social club. People have stereotypes in their heads about what Democrats are like and what Republicans are like, and they gravitate toward the party made up of people like themselves.

Once they have formed an affiliation, people bend their philosophies and their perceptions of reality so they become more and more aligned with members of their political tribe.

Insightful indeed, and common sense when you consider human behavior. Humans are pack animals and feel most comfortable when they conform to a group. Having opinions outside of the mainstream makes people uncomfortable. It affects all aspects of life, not just political opinions. When the NASDAQ was ridiculously overpriced at 5000, everyone was saying that it was still a good buy and justifying why a P/E ratio of 100 made sense. People, even smart people who work on Wall Street, are afraid to have their own opinions and do their own rational analysis.

David Brooks writes further to explain how voters aren't rational:

Party affiliation even shapes people's perceptions of reality. In 1960, Angus Campbell and others published a classic text, "The American Voter," in which they argued that partisanship serves as a filter. A partisan filters out facts that are inconsistent with the party's approved worldview and exaggerates facts that confirm it.

That observation has been criticized by some political scientists, who see voters as reasonably rational. But many political scientists are coming back to Campbell's conclusion: people's perceptions are blatantly biased by partisanship.

For example, the Princeton political scientist Larry Bartels has pointed to survey data collected after the Reagan and Clinton presidencies. In 1988, voters were asked if they thought the nation's inflation rate had fallen during the Reagan presidency.

In fact, it did. The inflation rate fell from 13.5 percent to 4.1 percent. But only 8 percent of strong Democrats said the rate had fallen. Fifty percent of partisan Democrats believed that inflation had risen under Reagan. Strong Republicans had a much sunnier and more accurate impression of economic trends. Forty-seven percent said inflation had declined.

I would say that David Brooks is describing a mild case of cognitive dissonance. According to James Atherton, "cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon which refers to the discomfort felt at a discrepancy between what you already know or believe, and new information or interpretation."

The classic example of cognitive dissonance was the study of a religous cult whose members believed that the world would be destroyed on a certain day. The day came, and the world wasn't destroyed. One might think that this would have alerted the cult members to the fact that their leader was a whacko who had misled them. But then they'd have to admit to themselves they were stupid for believing his nonsense. Instead, it was easier for them to believe their cult leader's explanation, that their faith had saved the world.

Cognitive dissonance makes it hard to convice people of opposite political beliefs that they are wrong about something. No matter how many facts you pile on to prove them wrong, you are unable to shake their religious-like belief in their ideology. Instead, they just get very mad at the person who is reciting the facts that prove them wrong.

I want everyone reading this to be aware that what you believe is often not based on rational analysis, and that you don't make rational decisions. You may be just as irrational as the members of the cult that believed that the world was coming to an end. It may be that your viewpoints on major policy issues are completely wrong because your brain refuses to admit that it has been wrong and therefore refuses to rationally analyze the facts.

If you're not sure what to believe, I urge you to keep reading my blog, and I will tell you. Because I'm a true contrarian who doesn't believe what everyone else tells me to believe. I do my own analysis and make up my own mind. I admit when I was wrong and when I was stupid. I acknowledge my faults. (These are all traits that don't help me very much in real life, so don't be jealous, just keep reading the blog.)

posted Sunday, June 06, 2004

2 Comments:

By Anonymous:

Thanks for an interesting discussion on cognitive dissonance. This comment is not meant to disagree with you. That said, I remember studying cognitive dissonance in a freshman psychology course thirty-five years ago. The central point - and this is only from memory - is that people have a need to avoid cognitive dissonance, which is the conflict between belief and empirical evidence (or, facts, though empirical evidence may not, in fact, be true). Anyway, the main point is that once a person has made a decision, then he or she tends to psychologically justify that decision as being the right decision - supporting facts are believed, non-supporting facts are disbelieved. Obviously, the more better-reasoned and accurate the original decision, the less need to later confront cognitive dissonance. Presumably, at some point, the person could make a new decision, rather than trying to process too much cognitive dissonance.

posted at 6/06/2004 11:34 PM

By Calico Cat:

I think that's what I said!

If someone "knows" Ronald Reagan (may he rest in peace) was a bad president, then they don't want to hear any facts that would suggest the contrary.

I also said this was a mild case of cognitive dissonance. I believe that cognitive dissonance is based on our brain's refusal to acknowledge it made a dumb decision. The more at stake, the stronger the cognitive dissonance. If you've devoted your whole life to a liberal political ideology, it causes cognitive dissonance to learn that you were wrong about stuff.

Cognitive dissonance is encouraged by the cheery optimism of American society. If you have any negative thoughts, such as "I made a lot of dumb decisions in life," this is looked down on as negative thinking to be avoided.

I think that because most people put so much effort into creating an unrealistic self-image of how great and wonderful and right about everything they are, they have diminished their ability to apply rational analysis to problems.

posted at 6/07/2004 1:25 AM