Why Voters Play Follow-the-Leader
What do you think is more dangerous? Terrorists getting their hands on a biological weapon that can be smuggled into the country or another hurricane like Katrina? Which is the smarter way to keep Social Security solvent? Raise the retirement age or raise taxes? How can the current economic crisis be averted?
How do we form preferences when we do not fully understand complex issues? We fall back on heuristics, or mental shortcuts. New research suggests the most powerful of these is to find leaders with whom we feel cultural kinship — and then follow whatever they recommend.
In an intriguing set of experiments, Braman, Yale University law professor Dan Kahan and others show that people reduce complex policy matters to a question of personal values. This simplifies decisions, but it places our conclusions — and even our perception of facts — at the mercy of traits that are ultimately arbitrary.
Two presidential candidates have explicitly tried to step away from this kind of thinking: When Barack Obama says it is possible to disagree without being disagreeable, or John McCain emphasizes that his political opponents have things to say that are of value, these politicians are encouraging voters to avoid turning policy debates into proxy wars about values.
“If you can generate conditions in which people are not engaged in cultural battles, they are much more likely to be relaxed and receptive to information,” Braman concluded. “Once people are on the defensive, they are very good at screening out facts that are contrary to their cultural commitments. It is a form of cognitive self-defense.” See the whole article here.