1869 Suffrage Ribbon with Quote from Susan B. Anthony
(Credit: Smithsonian Museum)
On November 5, 1872, Susan B. Anthony voted for president. On November 18 she was arrested. It was illegal for women to vote. She was convicted and fined $100 (which she refused to pay!). It would take another 48 years before the Nineteenth Amendment granted voting rights to women.
Voting is a right and a responsibility. It demands thoughtful citizenship. The only guarantee of good government is good governors, and the only way to get them is to vote for those with the necessary character and competence. That requires we know what influences our vote and thinking traps that lead to poor choices.
Let’s Talk
What determines who you will vote for in an upcoming election?
The Influence of Genes and Early Experiences
Nature” vs. Nurture”: Both genes and family/cultural influences impact our political thinking. Research with twins, whether raised together or separately, shows political attitudes depend about 40 percent on our genes. “We inherit some part of how we process information, how we see the world and how we perceive threats – and these are expressed in a modern society as political attitudes,” says genetic epidemiologist Peter Hatemi. Other research suggests that family environment influences political attitudes in youth and adolescence. Yet we’re not locked in. We still have plenty of freedom to choose who we’ll support.
Party Identification: About 60 percent of voters prefer a specific political party. Even for those calling themselves “Independent” research shows about 75 percent lean toward and vote consistently with one of the two major parties. Between 2018 and 2020, a Pew Research poll found nearly 90 percent of voters kept their party loyalty. But voters can and do cross party lines – if they keep open to change.
Moral Values: Many conservatives prefer candidates that focus on “law and order” and many liberals gravitate to those who favor police reform. On many issues (e.g. climate, abortion, guns, taxes) such differences exist. Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt (The Righteous Mind) suggests value preferences are shaped in youth, producing attachments to what he calls “moral foundations”. His research identified six foundations originally triggered by life events. For example, seeing the suffering of a child triggers a concern for caring and for preventing harm. Seeing cheaters benefit triggers our value for fairness.
In politics, Haidt’s research reveals that liberals and conservatives are very concerned with care/harm, fairness/cheating and liberty/oppression but conservatives care more than liberals about the other three moral foundations. Thus, the conservative response on policing may include calls for deference and loyalty to authority, which will not be stressed as much by liberals. Our moral foundations impact how we vote. Making them conscious can help us think more carefully about who we’ll support and open us to what matters to others as well.
Focus on Facts
Take the Moral Foundations test. How do the results impact your thinking about public issues and candidates?
How Do Candidates Try to Persuade Us?
While genes and early experiences shape some of our political leanings, the ultimate task for any candidate is to persuade us to give her/him our vote. Ideally, we concentrate on a candidate’s issues, competence and character. But we must be aware of the methods of political persuasion, which can sometimes sway our vote in ways we don’t even realize.
A typical campaign rally is a good example. It uses six core persuasion principles identified by psychologist Robert Cialdini (Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion).
Barack Obama Campaign Rally, October 2012
(Credit: Becker1999@wikimediacommons.org)
Liking: people like those who are like them - and who like them too. We’re more likely to become friends with someone we meet at a party when we share similar views and feel appreciated. In campaign rallies, candidates act like our friends and show they care about and have much in common with us. Some of that is real, but some may be deceptive advertising.
Authority: people defer to those they consider experts because of their knowledge/position. We listen more to a doctor than an ad announcing a “miracle” cure. The candidate at a campaign rally occupies an authority position, both physically on a platform and by virtue of being elected to or running for office. They often surround themselves with other authority figures whose endorsement they expect will lend them legitimacy.
Social Proof: people follow the lead of people like themselves. When we hear that several friends contributed to a gofundme campaign, we’re more likely to do so. The throng of supporters at a rally sends a message that “you should back him because we do.” That’s why candidates make sure they’re surrounded by cheering fans.
Commitment/Consistency: people keep commitments they’ve made. Attending a child’s school play makes us more likely to donate for next year’s production. When people at a campaign rally share personal information so a campaign can keep in touch, they’ve made a small commitment. Taking one step encourages other steps since we like to be consistent. So we then may then agree to donate, talk to voters, hand out literature, and vote for that candidate.
Reciprocity: people feel obligated to repay what someone has done for them. Charities send mailing labels because research shows many of us feel obligated to repay the “gift” with a donation. When candidates shake our hand, say they’ll support our issue and entertain us at a rally, we may feel obliged to do something to repay them.
Scarcity: the harder it is to get something, the more we value it. The success of “Amazon Prime Day” is partly due to feeling we’d better buy that item now, before the sale ends or it’s out of stock. When we secure a hard-to-get ticket to attend a rally, we value it (and perhaps the candidate) more.
Persuasion techniques play on our emotions. Being alert to how our emotions shape our voting behavior is thus important.
The Impact of Emotions
Any observer of the campaigns of Donald Trump knows he generated intense emotions among followers. Such emotions get voters to help in campaigns and vote. Understanding how emotions do that can help us assure that they do not obstruct our reason.
2019 Donald Trump Campaign Rally
(Credit: commons.wikimedia.org)
Emotional Synchronization: In a study of powerful political speeches, researchers scanned the brains of listeners. They found that their brain activity aligned with each other as they listened – both the regions that process language and hearing and those that generate and process emotions and enable the listener to put themselves in the shoes of the speaker. Candidates who ramp up our emotions can thus “hijack” our brains to connect with them and their supporters.
“Emotion equates the physiological state of the listener with that of the speaker, which makes it more likely that the listener will process incoming information in a similar manner to how the speaker sees it." - Psychologist Tali Sharot
Emotional events: When President George W. Bush first spoke after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he received a groundswell of support. Major political events are orchestrated to generate such emotional support. But even events totally unconnected to a politician can generate emotions that help a candidate – and we may not even know it. One study found that a local college football team’s win in the ten days before a presidential, senatorial or gubernatorial election boosted the incumbent’s vote total by 1.6 percentage points.
Anger and Fear: Studies that prime people to feel angry show it makes them less interested in seeking information about a candidate and issues – and thus more likely to “dig in” for their initial preferences. Those that prime people to feel fear, in contrast, lead them to seek out information for ways to lessen their fear, though where they turn for information and how biased it may be will impact the wisdom of their political choices.
Push Polls/Surveys: Some supposedly objective surveys and polls are designed purely for emotional persuasion. They’re constructed to make a candidate look better than an opponent. In a 2001 laboratory study about British Prime Minister Tony Blair, participants who were asked to name five positive traits were less favorable toward him than those asked to name five negative traits. The reason: it was hard to name five so those who couldn’t name five positive traits came away thinking less of him while those who couldn’t name five negative traits came away thinking he wasn’t that bad after all.
Let’s Talk
Where can you find objective evidence on how a politician has performed in office?
Decision Traps in Judging a Politician’s Performance
Objectively interpreting information on a politician’s record faces many decision traps. Here are a few not discussed in previous questions in “Of the People”.
(Credit: clipground.com)
The Halo Effect: The object of your first romantic crush seemed perfect. If any flaws existed, you couldn’t see them. That’s the halo effect: the good casts a positive glow that blinds us to imperfections. That can be true with politicians too, as can its opposite – the horn effect, where one negative trait or behavior blinds us to anything good about them.
In an age where candidates often appear as media celebrities, the halo associated with them can mislead us in evaluating them. In one study, participants had just one second to look at side-by-side photos of two Congressional candidates. The candidate rated as more attractive and familiar was also rated more competent and likely to be elected.
Action Bias: Most people act when faced with a problem and admire others who do. This preference for action may be hard-wired. Our ancestors who acted to eat or defend themselves survived and felt good about it. We may even like taking action just to prevent boredom. But taking action is not always the best course. After an embarrassing loss, a football coach may change the first-team roster, but maybe the team’s problem is poor practices or the game plan. Demoting some players may even worsen team morale and performance. The action bias occurs when we take action even if there is no indication that the action will produce a better result - and may actually make things worse.
Announcing grand policies or committing American forces overseas often rouse support. We equate such actions with strength and power, but restraint might be wiser. When President George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, he was viewed by many as a decisive leader protecting the nation. By 2006, when no weapons of mass destruction were found and the post-invasion occupation fostered an anti-American insurgency, “Bush’s war” was seen by many as an ill-advised failure.
Availability Bias: People are leery of dying from a shark attack at the beach. They’ve seen grisly photos of mangled bodies and movies like Jaws. Yet the lifetime odds of dying from a shark attack are 1 in 4,332,817. Compare this with the odds of dying by incidents which rarely make headlines, such as bikes (1 in 4,919) or accidental poisoning (1 in 193). We’re all prone to this availability bias: we judge the likelihood of an event by how easy it is to imagine or access instances.
In politics, this affects judgments about politicians. Conservatives fear liberal candidates because they generally access conservative media and thus get reports of “bad” things liberals will do if elected. A comparable bias against conservatives is true for liberals who only access liberal media.
Focus on Facts
What news sources are used most by liberals? Conservatives? Independents?
Recency Bias: In a 2011 Gallup Poll people were asked to name the “greatest” president. The top four choices accounted for 57 percent of all responses. Three of them served since 1960 (Reagan, Kennedy, Clinton). Missing from the top four were George Washington and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, presidents highly rated by professional historians. Americans have more trouble calling up information about them because they served so long ago. That’s the recency bias: we give more weight to recent events than to those harder to recall.
Just days before the 2016 presidential election, FBI Director James Comey announced he was re-opening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s missing emails. Despite the fact that previous FBI announcements found no evidence of wrongdoing, this most recent event may have cost her the presidency. It was easy to recall when people voted.
Hindsight Bias: Some Civil War buffs can identify many reasons why the Union victory was inevitable. The North had a larger population, more industrial might, a good rail network, etc. Yet, in 1864, no one knew the outcome, including Abraham Lincoln who assumed he would not be re-elected and that his successor would broker a peace deal with the South. This illustrates the hindsight bias – seeing past events as more predictable than they really were at the time. The short definition of it - “I knew it all along!” - is common in everyday life. The day after a seventh-game in the World Series, jubilant fans can be heard saying “I just knew that my team would win.”
Before the hotly contested Senate vote on the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court in October 1991, researchers asked a group of people to predict the outcome. Fifty-eight percent predicted he would be confirmed. A month later, after the Senate voted, the same people were asked to recall their prediction, and 78 percent said they knew he would be confirmed. Clearly, many gave themselves undeserved credit when they saw the result in hindsight.
The hindsight bias can lead us to blame politicians for things that “we just knew” would go wrong even if no one did at the time. It can also lead us to give politicians more credit than events warrant. Today, “we just knew” that President Reagan’s 1987 line “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” would lead to the dissolution of the Soviet Union two years later, but of course many foreign policy experts were surprised when it happened.
“It is easy to be wise after the event.”
– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Complete Sherlock Holmes
Why People Forgive a Politician Who’s Done Something Wrong
We can love our politicians so much that when they do something wrong, we ignore it or forgive them. President Nixon covered-up the Watergate break-in. President Clinton had sex with a White House intern. President Trump encouraged a march on the Capitol that ended in violence. Yet many supporters gave each a pass, even those who acknowledged these presidents should have behaved differently. Understanding why can avoid excusing behavior that raises serious questions about whether we should vote for someone.
NPR’s “The Hidden Brain” science correspondent Shankar Vedantam reported on a study by professors Uma Karmarkar and Bryan Bollinger. They gathered data on who buys more junk food at the grocery store - people who use the store’s plastic bags or those who bring re-usable cloth bags. Sounds obvious: people who are environmentally conscious will be conscious of their health and buy less junk food. Except they actually buy more of it than people who use plastic bags. Psychologists call this moral self-licensing: if we’ve done something good, we may give ourselves permission to do something not so good. It’s why some dieters reward themselves with a piece of cake and why some environmentalists drive gas-guzzling SUVs.
Moral self-licensing may partially explain politicians’ who forgive their own bad behavior. Viewing themselves as good people doing public good, a transgression here and there does not change that self-image.
Applied to candidates, we may forgive (“license”) those we think have accumulated "moral capital," including favored politicians. Feeling a leader (Nixon, Clinton, Trump) has done many morally good things, we may excuse their immoral (and sometimes illegal) lapses.
So What? Now What?
Almost all the Questions in “Of the People can help us decide what candidate to support. How we make political decisions (Question #4) and explore issues (Questions #5, 6, 7) help us decide what direction America needs to go. How we deal with public opinion (Question #10), conspiracy theories (Question #11), fake news (Question #12), and group pressure (Question #13) help us navigate through efforts to persuade us.
We’ve also focused on how important it is to be willing to change our minds (Question #9), deal with political campaign ads (Question #14) and detect lies in public life (Question #15).
Here we’ll offer tips for avoiding these additional thinking traps.
Use of persuasion techniques that hijack our thinking
Halo effect: allowing the good to cast a glow that blinds us to imperfections
Action bias: preferring action even when there is no indication that action will produce a better result - and may actually make things worse
Availability bias: judging by relying on evidence that is easiest to imagine or access
Recency bias: giving more weight to recent events than to those harder to recall
Hindsight bias: seeing past events as more predictable than they really were at the time
Moral licensing: forgiving moral lapses when we consider someone otherwise good
Use of Persuasion Techniques: There’s nothing wrong with politicians seeking to engage our emotions - unless we allow that to hijack our reason. To avoid this we can ask questions about a politician’s use of the principles of persuasion and decide how committed to that person we truly want to be:
Avoiding the Halo Effect and Moral Licensing: None of us is perfect, so what we must do is spot if we just ignore concerns because we are over-awed by a politician’s good qualities (the halo effect) or see but just forgive a politician’s moral flaws because we consider him/her a good person (moral licensing). Some actions we can take:
o List personal characteristics you like about the person and those you do n
o Next, do the same for her/his opponent(s).
Look at your lists. If you listed mostly positive and few if any negatives for your politician you may be succumbing to the halo effect. If you listed mostly negative and few if any positives for an opponent, that may be the horn effect. Either of these signals the need to look for more information. Consult sources you don’t usually rely upon.
Now, list 2-3 moral lapses of a politician you like. Maybe they lied, associated with corrupt officials or treated people in ways you would not. Do you excuse this behavior, either because of the good things they do or your belief in their inherent goodness? If so, you be engaged in moral licensing. What if a politician you dislike did the exact same things? Would you excuse that person? If not, that also a sign of moral licensing for your preferred politician.
Spotting Action Bias: Politicians like us to think they’re action takers. Some questions can help you determine if their actions are seriously meant and likely to make things better:
o Are the actions specific in detail or just general/vague promises? Are the actions just meant to convey activity but not true commitment?
o What is their track record on previous actions and promises?
o What evidence exists from reputable sources that their past or proposed actions have been or are likely to be beneficial? Harmful?
Avoiding Availability and Recency Biases:
o Which of These Sources Do You Most Often Use to Get News?
Surveys reveal that conservatives rely most heavily on some sources (e.g. Fox News, NewsMax) while liberals rely most heavily on others (e.g. New York Times, MSNBC). This introduces availability bias – it’s hard to access or imagine other facts and viewpoints if your sources all lean in one direction. Another danger is relying for news solely on social media. The business model of many social media sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) is to keep you online (so you can see ads) by giving you emotional, attention- grabbing headlines and content that agrees with what you already think.
The best strategy is seeking contrasting views. Search sites likely to give you facts and views you don’t usually see. Regularly access sources known to be more even-handed (e.g. USAToday, PBS).
o Be Careful with “News: By definition, “news” consists mostly of recent events. Thus, a “bombshell” story just before an election – the so-called “October surprise” - may capture our attention and sway our vote. Days before the 2000 presidential election between Al Gore and George W. Bush, a story broke that Bush had been arrested for drunk driving in 1976. The recency bias could give undue weight to such reports close to an election. To judge a politician carefully requires much more evidence over a longer time period. The opinion and analysis sections of respected news organizations, journals known for in-depth coverage of candidates and careful (unbiased) Internet searches can help.
Avoiding hindsight bias: “It’s the economy, stupid” became a slogan that helped Bill Clinton defeat George H.W. Bush in the 1992 election when the nation was in a recession. It argued that Bush mismanaged the economy and hindsight pointed to his “mistakes.” Since such hindsight bias can be unfair, we should always look for other causes for “we knew it all along” results. In 1992, the recession affected much of the Western world and was most likely due to things over which Bush had little influence, including restrictive monetary policy by central banks, the loss of consumer/business confidence due to a 1990 oil price shock, the decrease in defense spending due to the end of the Cold War and a savings and loan crisis. To avoid being victim of the hindsight bias, seek all the causes of a current situation and then ask whether a candidate could or could not have foreseen or avoided them.
Deciding who to support is not easy. The work of democracy never is. Keep these three final thoughts in mind:
Practice Humility: Accept that you don’t know everything, may be wrong and that “due diligence” in learning about politicians is important.
Take Your Time: Don’t commit too early. Spend even a little time each day to improve your knowledge and practice the tips above.
Be Flexible: Change your mind when objective evidence suggests you should.