Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

The Secular Spectrum

Home
Nonreligious
The Myth of the Irrational Voter

The Myth of the Irrational Voter

Last updated on: November 6, 2016 at 6:37 pm by Gleb Tsipursky

The Myth of the Irrational Voter 2016-11-06T18:37:52-05:00 Gleb Tsipursky

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Caption: Voting rights advocates (Michael Fleshman, Flickr)

Voters are inherently irrational. They are moved by emotions, not facts. Their biases cause them to make bad political decisions. We need to shape our political process around their irrationality, and manipulate them to get them to make more rational choices.

Or so claim many pundits, politicians, and scholars. Are they right?

These analysts make some valid points. Still, their overall depiction of the “irrational voter” is a myth.

Yes, research in psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and behavioral economics shows that we have a number of thinking errors that can cause us to make irrational decisions. We tend to think of ourselves as rational creatures who form our opinions based on logical facts. In reality, our emotions play a much larger role in influencing our beliefs than we intuitively perceive.

Politicians skilled in the psychology of persuasion can take advantage of our thinking errors to manipulate us. Unless we are paying attention, we are highly likely to be influenced by their appeals to these flawed patterns of feeling and thinking, and make biased political decisions.

Fortunately, we are not doomed to this fate of irrationality. Recent scholarship has shown that we can train ourselves to be less biased and more rational, including in our voting. Doing so requires some work to get away from our intuitive thinking errors. Yet considering how valuable our votes are – each vote is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars – it is vital for each of us to put in the effort required to make a wise decision with our vote.

For example, many people tend to vote for a candidate by their gut intuitions of whether a candidate looks presidential and other “likeability” factors. This is known as the famous “who would you rather have a beer with” test, a question that is commonly tested in the polls. However, candidates are quite strategic, and – just like candidates in job interviews – try to manage the image they project to voters of how “likeable” they are.

We have plenty of scholarship showing that an intuitive estimation at the gut level of likeability in job interviews is a very poor predictor of future job performance, and the same goes for presidential candidates. Voters using their gut intuitions – the “beer test” – are likely to be fooled. This is especially problematic for female candidates who have to walk a tightrope between appearing likeable and competent, a problem not faced by male candidates.

So do we then not allow our emotions a role in our voting decisions? No, of course not! Our emotions make us who we are as individuals.

We just need to avoid a situation where our emotions cause us to make biased decisions by allowing candidates to manipulate us. After all, we are not going to be having a beer with the candidate we elect. Since we know that evaluating candidate personalities is an area of weakness for us, we need to let our emotions play a different role.

Instead, our emotions should determine our values and consequently the policies we support. We can use our emotions to guide us on shaping our perspective on the relevant political issues and get a good read on ourselves through taking a political typology quiz.

Next, we should turn to our rational thinking to compare our positions on the issues to those of the candidates. If we are substantially closer to either of the two major party candidates, we can simply go with that, unless we have strong doubts about the fitness of that candidate for office.

If we are closest to a third party candidate, the bad news is that this candidate will almost certainly lose. So if we want our vote to make an impact in determining how hundreds of thousands of dollars are going to be spent, it is wise to choose a major party candidate, whoever is closest to our policy preferences. Some people also swap their vote with someone in a swing state to make an impact while ensuring a vote for their preferred candidate.

Now say your policy positions are between the two major party candidates, or you think your preferred major party candidate may not be fit for office. This is the only appropriate time to evaluate a candidate’s personality. However, I strongly urge you to not trust your gut on this!

For instance, most voters tend to perceive Donald Trump as more trustworthy than Hillary Clinton, despite nonpartisan fact-checkers such as Politifact showing that Trump lies much more often than Clinton. This is because the Trump campaign has successfully manipulated many voters into believing that Clinton is less honest, in spite of the evidence that she is much more honest by comparison to Trump. The Trump campaign did so through the illusory truth effect, a thinking error in our minds that happens when statements are repeated many times and we begin to see them as true, despite these statements being false.

Research shows that we tend to be way too confident in our political evaluations when going with our gut, and this is why we need to rely on experts when evaluating candidate’s personalities, such as fact-checkers, not our intuitions. Using the judgments of experts, evaluate which of the candidates will be most effective in governing the country and implementing your preferred policies if elected. Then, go with that candidate.

This simple step-by-step process can empower us to make truly rational voting decisions that align our values and emotions with our thoughts and our actions. By doing so, we can show all those politicians, scholars, and pundits that they are wrong to proclaim that voters are irrational and should be manipulated for their own good.

Church/State separation

emotional intelligence

irrationality

politics

President Obama

presidential election

rationality

Republican party

voting

Previous Post

November 2, 2016

Your Vote May Be Worth Millions!

Next Post

November 7, 2016 The Power of Religion and the Secular

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Ableism Activism Addiction and Recovery Agnosticism Anti-intellectualism Arts Atheism Beauty Catholicism Charles Darwin Children China Christianity Church/State separation churchgoing communication compassionate humanism Creationism critical thinking Culture death disaster response doubt education Egypt Entertainment Environment ethics evolution Existence of God Exploration fear Foundation Beyond Belief Free speech God Health History Human rights humanism identity India Interfaith Islam labels Language LGBT Love Meaning Media Medicine Middle East misconceptions mixed belief marriage Moral argument Morality Myths Near-Death Experience Nonreligious parenting Parody Persecution complex Philosophy Poetry Politics prayer Psychology Rationality Religion religious atheists Religious privilege Republican Party Satire Schools science secular parenting Spirituality The Unpigeonholeables Uncategorized United Kingdom Wonder

Select a Month March 2021 August 2020 March 2020 January 2020 September 2019 July 2019 June 2019 April 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 June 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which Christian group believes in "baptism of the Holy Spirit" with evidence of speaking in tongues?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Lutherans Pentecostals Methodists Presbyterians