A core assumption in any democracy is that citizens with access to information will make reasoned decisions on political candidates and policy issues. But a new study by UC Berkeley social scientists finds that Americans usually don't consider the full scope of difficult issues, instead basing their opinions on mental shortcuts that sidestep complexity.
The paper offers striking insight into the differences in cognitive reasoning patterns among Americans. While some people in the study did closely analyze a range of issues before coming to an opinion, others did a quick back-of-the-napkin tally of plusses and minuses, or even more commonly based their opinions on just one factor, the authors found.
"When people make complicated choices with many considerations - which political candidate to support, which immigrant they would rather admit to the country, which climate policy they prefer - we tend to assume they're weighing all the factors," said Berkeley political scientist Kirk Bansak. But, he added, "we find that most of them aren't. Most commonly, people rely on a mental shortcut, effectively deciding based on the single factor they care about most and largely ignoring the rest."
For example, when asked to choose between two fictional U.S. Senate candidates based on age, gender, race, education, military experience and political experience, many of the study participants would make their decision based on just one of those factors.
That doesn't mean that people are irrational, said co-author Nidhi Banavar, a Berkeley cognitive scientist. "The kind of rationality that we define in paper is quite different from what many humans actually do in real life," she explained. "We have these amazing brains, but they're not the infinite computational machines that would be necessary in order to do the kind of 'rational' we imagine in our paper."
Still, the findings have clear implications for politics and political communication. For example, Banavar said, if a leader knows that public opinion on climate change is dominated by pocketbook concerns to the exclusion of other issues, then that single factor might weigh heavily in political advertising. Complex science issues, meanwhile, might be downplayed.
Lars Plougmann via Wikimedia Commons
The paper, "Classifying Strategy Use in Multi-Attribute Subjective Choice: Application to Conjoint Experiments in Political Science," was published earlier this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Bansak is an associate professor of political science; Banavar is a postdoctoral researcher in political science.
The foundational ideals of American democracy grew from the Enlightenment era some three centuries ago. Central to that framework was a belief that humans, being rational, are capable of governing themselves - and justified in demanding political power. A core concept has been the marketplace of ideas, a constant competition between political and policy goals, plans and analysis that would inform citizens and help them to govern themselves.
While many eras in U.S. history feature episodes in which reason faltered, modern social scientists have detailed the ways in which cognitive bias, rational ignorance and other behaviors short-circuit reasoning. Still, the hopeful assumption about human reasoning persists.
Deep patterns in decision-making
Social scientists have long studied human decision-making at the aggregate level. Banavar and Bansak set out to build a new kind of cognitive model, a complex tool that can enable researchers to see an individual's decision-making mid-process, in detail.
The model doesn't give them a view into the minds of their research subjects, but the researchers can study hundreds or thousands of decisions by an individual; from these patterns, they can perceive the values and reasoning processes that shape their decisions.
We have these amazing brains, but they're not the infinite computational machines.
Nidhi Banavar
In all, nearly 3,800 people were involved in the study. Each participant sat at a computer screen, and the computer generated a random set of choices in three areas: which migrants they would rather admit to the United States, which Senate primary candidate they would rather vote for, and which climate policy package they would prefer the United States to adopt.
Consider the basic question comparing two hypothetical migrants to the U.S. Their profiles appeared side by side, each described by six factors: region of origin; education level; gender; age; English proficiency; and whether they were seeking economic opportunity or asylum. The research subject would have to choose which of the migrants they preferred to admit to the U.S.
The computer randomly presented 30 different sets of hypothetical migrants. If a participant consistently chose the younger migrant or the migrant with greater English skills, for example, the researchers could conclude that that was the most important factor for that participant.
The same decision framework was presented for comparing potential climate change policies and fictional U.S. Senate candidates.
The research did yield some insights about basic priorities: Participants preferred younger political candidates. They preferred climate change policy that minimized economic impact on their household. They preferred immigrants who were seeking asylum as opposed to seeking economic opportunity, and those who were below retirement age.
But that wasn't the primary purpose of the study. Banavar and Bansak were less interested in what participants decided, and more interested in how they decided.
Thoughtful reflection or hot takes?
The results were striking: In 68% of the cases, study participants used shortcuts and did not deeply assess all six factors when choosing between hypothetical Senate candidates, migrants or climate policies.
This bears directly on how we interpret the kind of public-opinion … data that routinely informs policy debates and news coverage.
Kirk Bansak
Nearly 54% showed a pattern of making choices dominated by one of the six factors. Another 14% took a different shortcut: Given six factors for each candidate or policy, they counted the total number of factors that they preferred for each, then chose the one containing the greater number.
How many used a comprehensive evaluation of all six factors - a rational assessment, without any shortcuts? Just under 30%.
Interestingly, Banavar said, a majority of participants did not consistently stay with the same strategy. Some might rely on just one factor in choosing a climate policy, while more fully weighing all the factors in deciding which migrant to admit.
"You can't put people into buckets to say, 'Okay, this is someone who's actually only going to care about only one thing,'" she said. "People are actually relating differently to each of these different domains and choosing to use different levels of effort, for want of a better term."
To understand why people shift strategies will require further research, she said.
The study comes with some important caveats: If a participant favored female candidates, for example, or migrants who were seeking political asylum, and if both choices had those attributes, the participants had to consider other factors. That reduced, but did not eliminate, the pattern of making a choice based on one factor.
But when the researchers asked the participants to rate each profile before choosing one of them, the participants were more inclined to consider all factors in making their choices.
Further, the researchers allowed for only two attributes in their comparisons - male or female, for example, white or Black, or aged in their 50s or 70s. That's not ideal, Banavar said, but to include multiple races, for example, is too complex for the cognitive model, and would dilute the patterns in the data. In the choice of Senate candidates, the study did not include the fictional candidates' political parties. That question could provoke such strong, reflexive reactions that it would cloud the findings, she said.
Implications for real-world politics
The authors say their research has important implications not just for cognitive research, but for real-world, on-the-ground U.S. political processes.
Often, Bansak said, our understanding of public opinion is based on surveys that ask people to choose between complex options defined by many factors. The new research shows analysts that individuals often base their opinions on a single factor, and that can create a clearer picture of what people want in public policy, and why they want it.
"This bears directly on how we interpret the kind of public-opinion and preference data that routinely informs policy debates and news coverage," he said.
And that understanding, Banavar said, can shape the policy process - and political communication. If leaders present issues in layers of complexity, "how much are people going to read or listen to that?" she asked. "What is the thing that's really important to them, given a particular issue? That's completely lost when you don't think about the decision-making process."
