Exploding the "myth of the rational voter"

One of the hot books in American political debate at the moment is Bryan Caplan's Myth of the Rational Voter.

Caplan's theory is, essentially, that James Surowiecki was wrong in his book The Wisdom of Crowds. Ignorant opinions do not cancel themselves out, producing truth. There are systematic biases reflecting a general misunderstanding of markets.

Now Daniel Casse, the Republican speechwriter and strategist has taken issue with Caplan. In a piece for the Wall Street Journal, Casse takes as an example Caplan's complaints that voters don't understand free trade. He points out that despite this deficiency most politicians have been allowed by voters to pursue free trade policies.

Dan is making an important distinction, I think. Voters have opinions that they don't necessarily want their elected representatives to replicate. They want their instincts to be taken heed of, but not their ignorance. Being able to distinguish between the two is a rare but indispensable political skill.

Comments

[Simon Stephenson]

"Voters have opinions that they don't necessarily want their elected representatives to replicate. They want their instincts to be taken heed of, but not their ignorance. Being able to distinguish between the two is a rare but indispensable political skill."

It's certainly a more workable platform, isn't it, to be able to assume approval for policy even if this approval is not represented in opinion polls. More workable, that is, than a platform that is required to assume that majority dissenting opinion is down to the general public just being plain wrong. But your concept is dangerously open to abuse, don't you think? Doesn't it give the more unreasonable and, dare I say, instinctive politicians a stay-sharp weapon? There really is, to my mind, little progress that can be made in discussion with someone who maintains "this is what they really want even though they don't actually say so".

I rather favour the intellect/rationalist position myself. I think that giving credence to the idea that instinct is the higher level of competence is really just an ego-defence for those who are baffled by intellect. However, the social current seems to me to be flowing in an intellect-low direction, and it concerns me that rationalism maybe no longer carries enough weight to influence the direction of this flow. We are educating a generation of children to accept unquestioningly the fads and fashions of the age, one of which is that orthodoxy is supported by a force that is of a higher level than reason. It's difficult for me to imagine how we will be able to change course without the disillusioning shock that would result from a major breakdown of our current structures.

[David Moss]

CONFIRMATION BIAS?
This week's Spectator carries an article by Drew Westen*, 'If you want power, be emotional, not rational'.

He says:

"Educated voters are no more rational than their less educated or politically interested peers. The most politically aware voters tend to be the most partisan — and the most partisan voters are the least likely to listen to reasoned arguments. Instead, as our research using brain scanning has shown, when confronted with information they don’t like, partisans simply change their interpretation of the information until it’s more to their liking — and then their brains get a jolt of dopamine, a neural ‘fix’ that reinforces their failure to take data seriously".

I wonder if this is a case in point:

"Voters have opinions that they don't necessarily want their elected representatives to replicate. They want their instincts to be taken heed of, but not their ignorance."

As for "... being able to distinguish between the two is a rare but indispensable political skill", I have nothing to add to Mr Stephenson's comment above.

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* http://www.spectator.co.uk/archive/features/44215/if-you-want-power-be-emotional-not-rational.thtml

[David Moss]

There is something in what Mr Westen says.

"They want their instincts to be taken heed of, but not their ignorance" is the Westen dopamine patch needed, by adherents of Mr Caplan, to retain their faith in the rational voter, even after the injuries inflicted on it, by Mr Casse's free trade counter-example of the ignorant voter.

Now, presumably, someone will have to write a post-Finkelstein book exploding the myth of the tidy voter, capable of separating his instincts from his ignorance, and capable of finding just the right parliamentary representative to pay heed to one but not the other.

And there is something omitted from what Mr Westen says. The point about emotions is that they are a mixture of feelings and reason, both. He is interested in the fact that people's thoughts are influenced by their feelings. I would point out that it works the other way round, too -- voters' feelings can be influenced by giving them new facts. I.e. it is worth campaigning rationally.

On your recommendation, I am taking Mr Cialdini's book on holiday with me. I fully expect it to give me apoplexy.

May I recommend to you in return the unpublished and unperformed play*, 'Have you ever had breakfast with Sophia Loren?', which expands on the nature of emotion and nails the Conservative Party's problem with principles, quite unwittingly, having been written four years before the author had even heard of Messrs Cameron and Hilton.

Well, not quite unwittingly. It drew heavily on six years' experience of the Labour Party's problem with principles.

I am also taking the McKee book. The next play may as a result be a bit more publishable and performable.

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* http://dematerialisedid.com/PDFs/Breakfast.pdf

[Martin]

Sorry to say. Caplan’s book is full of illogical and contradictory arguments, mangled terms, cultural prejudice, and a whole lot of other weaknesses. It’s also pretty scary when you really think about what he is arguing for. Like a lot of cloistered academics, he’s hermetically sealed inside his own thinking and theories, and totally unhinged from the real world... past and present. I won’t recap the whole list of objections here... but it’s on my site. (literalmayhem.com)