
Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions - randomname2
http://www.nber.org/papers/w19080
======
dnautics
"For example, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say that the
deficit rose during the Clinton administration; Democrats are more likely to
say that inflation rose under Reagan."

These are both really tricky questions, because the questions described are
derivatives of derivatives! The deficit is the time derivative of the debt; so
it's possible that someone is hearing "did the debt rise during clinton"
(which would be true). Likewise, inflation is the derivative of the value of
money. So someone might be hearing "did things get more expensive over reagan"
(which would also be true). The deficit/debt one is really tricky since they
both start with the letter D and even though I know the difference
occasionally in conversation I switch the two.

~~~
chc
The point is that people tend to answer the question in a way that favors
their party and disfavors the other party if you just ask them, but they're
more likely to get it right if you offer an incentive to do so. This can't be
explained just by "The questions are tricky," though that might be
contributing factor that helps people fool themselves when they want to.

~~~
smallnamespace
I'd offer that one issue with representative democracy is that the direct
external payoff for voting well (by 'well', I mean taking the time to do
honest research and keeping an open mind) is pretty much zero.

That leads to a contradiction -- we expect our elected politicians to do
whatever the public wants, but we also want our politicians to be wise,
forward thinking, selfless, and moral leaders. Those two desires can only be
fully reconciled if the public itself has those qualities, but the public
doesn't have much direct, quick feedback as to whether it's making good
choices.

We also don't want to pay our politicians very much (politicians make orders
of magnitude less than, say, business leaders) and still expect them to be
fully independent, unbribeable, and only beholden to the public. You get what
you pay for.

~~~
DougN7
Nailed it on the head! Everyone wants someone else to pay for services. Nobody
is saying "Raise my taxes - I appreciate these services". We're all complicit.

~~~
didibus
Very true. Coming from Quebec, Canada, I actually say that. It's more
ingrained in our culture that what we are taxed for is services that benefit
us all and that makes our societal environment more enjoyable.

Now in the US, I can't seem to find anyone who think this. My biggest issue is
that I can't even find anyone who thinks that the government is the people.
Everyone seems to think of the government as this black box that has a mind of
its own and inflict laws and rules upon us. While I'm much more used to the
common thinking that the people rule, and the government simply enact our
rule. We elect it, we pay for it, and therefore it simply does what we elected
and paid for it to do.

I'm not sure what makes up that difference, but it could be the bi-
partisanery. It's a shame too, because it often fails to capture fine grain
requirements. Like say I wanted a very liberal economy, while keeping gun
rights strong and conservative norms in place? Or the other way around?
There's no kind of choice like that. So you lysine end up for choosing based
on your top issue only.

~~~
kristopolous
It's a pro-private, anti-democratic push by chicago school, objectivists, and
other groups, to essentially slander civic institutions as terrible and
"privatize" them with capital extracting robber barons. "Government" is a 4
letter word and some people are insufferable in their hatred for it - thinking
that some private selfish interest of people would magically make the world
... look, it's all preposterous ... it's apologetics and denialism wrapped in
the religious fervor of a mythical free market.

~~~
AnthonyMouse
A huge part of the problem is that people think one system is better than the
other when it's really a spectrum where both extremes are absurd. Suppose you
want to have some roads, how do you do it?

a) Pure Communism. The state builds the roads. The state needs road workers
and workers need food so the state grows food. The workers need steamrollers
so the state manufactures steamrollers. The workers need asphalt so the state
mines gravel. The entire economy is centrally planned and collapses like the
USSR.

b) Pure Capitalism. A private company owns the road. You need their permission
to leave your house, take deliveries, receive an ambulance, connect to the
power grid, etc. They charge what the market will bear. Everyone becomes a
serf of the road company.

c) Capitalist Social Democracy. The state collects taxes and takes bids for
private contractors to build the roads, which the state then owns and allows
all people to use at no charge.

Only one of those actually works.

~~~
kristopolous
C can be a problem. It's how the military industrial complex that Eisenhower
warned us about is structured.

"C" is what leads to things like corporate bail outs.

Parenti talked about this with Conrail in the 80s. It was a train system that
was put in public trust because it couldn't make money in the 70s. Then after
the public made it profitable, under Reagan, it was reprivatized - not because
it didn't work, but because it did work.

"C" goes beyond this in corruption. You get "compromises" where you have
private health-care paid by public taxes (obamacare) or medicare part D with
prescriptions being covered but the government forbidden from negotiating the
prices. Or you get private for-profit schools able to use government loans for
tuition and getting to the corrupt state of affairs we have now.

No, "C" is a terrible idea because it's a giant funnel into the hand of
corrupt bank accounts - it promotes the state to prop up forms of
dysfunctional capitalism.

In fact if you look at the _total_ tax burden by country, including state tax
and other things
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates))
You see that the US is higher than places like Luxembourg, Denmark, the
Netherlands - way above France and the UK. We pay more and get less, and it's
all because of "C".

~~~
rjbwork
But all those other countries you mentioned are also C, in a way bigger way.
The US leans more towards B, in actuality, versus those other countries. Are
you saying A is the solution?

~~~
kristopolous
Not really. If we can agree that people respond to incentives, then we should
make sure the incentives of how we constitute civil society align with their
purpose and that the purpose doesn't get perverted through gamesmanship.

For instance, arguably schools are primarily for education. So increasing the
access to and quality of education is probably a decent goal.

For profit systems certainly have increased the access to, but arguably
deceased the quality of, and arguably education is only incidental to the true
project, which is profit.^1

It's this problem, where we entrust civic needs in private hands and hope the
needs are satisfied incidentally.

The problem with communism is that it's somewhat the same thing. Instead of
economic capital, they fight for political capital using a similar perversion
of incentives.

I don't think there exists a Grand Unified Equation that works for all civic
needs and I don't think that the best answers already exist.

Instead, I think it should be openly and honestly researched like all other
sciences and leave the sportsmanship and team cheering world it currently
occupies.

\----

[1] For-Profit schools may have their place. I don't know much about auto
mechanics or plumbing, but I can imagine a certified for-profit program would
be a fine way to do this. I can also imagine them cutting costs, paying off
inspections, and passing everyone so nobody stops paying the tuition. The goal
is to not make ripping people off and cheating them out of an education such a
profitable and incentivized thing to do.

------
Fr0ntBack
Interesting finding. One of the problems with voting is that there is no
incentive or a very small incentive to choose the candidate with the best
policies, because the chance of your vote making a difference is so small.
Therefore people vote for a candidate that makes them feel good, rather than a
competent one. This is arguably the cause of many bad policies. Caplan
discusses this issue in his book 'The Myth of the Rational Voter'
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter)

~~~
philh
Counterpoint:
[http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/rati...](http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/rational_final7.pdf)

This paper argues that voting for social reasons ("this result will benefit
society") is sensible even in large elections. The value depends on the
percent turnout, but not on population size.

~~~
throwaway729
Voting theory models rational actors, not actual people.

Interestingly, fontback's hypothesis is exactly how they modeled the choice,
with a financial incentive plus some "psychological incentive"

~~~
philh
"there is no incentive or a very small incentive to choose the candidate with
the best policies, because the chance of your vote making a difference is so
small" is a theoretical argument about rational actors, not an observation
about actual people. The paper I linked argues that it doesn't hold. It also
argues that there's some real-world evidence that people vote for social
reasons.

~~~
scarmig
Regardless of how a person votes, they're voting for a feel-good reason.

Some people's identity gives them pleasure in voting for the candidate that
rationally maximizes the Good, for some subjective measure of the good. These
are the 'social preferences' Gellman talks about.

Some people's identity gives them pleasure in the tribe, and they want to vote
for the people like them and around them to fit in, especially so they won't
be confused with the Enemy.

Pretty much everyone has both tendencies, which are inherently in tension.
This is cognitive dissonance. People don't like experiencing this, so they end
up choosing to believe both in tribal politics and that their tribe is the
rational one, which is the most convenient way to cut that Gordian knot.

Now, we can debate which tribe is more rational. I think currently in the USA
the blue tribe has more people motivated by the desire to be seen as rational.
Then again, we'd also predict that's what everyone thinks. So probably that
debate wouldn't be productive.

This experiment is useful because it tells us that money is a very useful way
to cut through the bullshit of tribal beliefs. It also might give us hints as
to how to design our electoral system to tend toward more rational options.

~~~
bmelton
> Pretty much everyone has both tendencies, which are inherently in tension.
> This is cognitive dissonance. People don't like experiencing this, so they
> end up choosing to believe both in tribal politics and that their tribe is
> the rational one, which is the most convenient way to cut that Gordian knot.

And in addition, the more and more fiercely we tribally associate, the less
and less we want to do with the other tribes. This has gone to the extent that
certain fields of employment, or even fields of science are largely owned on
tribal lines.

Conservatives largely outnumber liberals in fields like agriculture, while
liberals dominate social sciences. This sounds fine, but peer review demands
cultural diversity as well, or our own cognitive bias imparts blind-spots on
the work. The only fix for those blind spots is cultural diversity, and the
only way people can be happy with that cultural diversity is to re-tie their
Gordian knots and learn to accept other people as other people, and not the
devil monsters we tend to equate them as today.

~~~
iainmerrick
Both you and the previous commenter seem to be talking about the polarization
of politics as if it's an inevitable feature of human social interaction. But
I think that's a little overly simplistic.

The current extreme polarization in the US is new and fairly unusual, in
historical terms. It could be an inevitable phase that other counties will
reach too, or it could just be a random artifact of the US's history and
political system. Very few countries have a voting system that locks in the
main two parties as strongly as the US, for example.

The idea that all politics is purely about tribal identity, and that
"rationality" is a myth, would seem to suggest that we've never made any real
social advances. But I'd count things like the outlawing of slavery as
advances.

It reminds me of the extreme view of social structures in science (which
Thomas Kuhn subscribed to, if I remember right), that all scientific
"advances" and "revolutions" are just changes in fashion as one generation of
scientists succeeds another. But each advance does in fact get us closer to
the truth, even if we never quite reach it.

~~~
bmelton
I don't think it's at all inevitable, nor do I disbelieve that political
polarization is new. That said, tribal clustering is as old as time.

Without getting into the whys and wherefores, my main concern is that as we
eliminate some forms of tribal clustering (ethnic, gender, class, etc.) we are
simply replacing them with other forms, namely political affiliation or wedge
issues. Particularly, I'm concerned with tribal clustering on wedge issues
that don't affect the quality of work a person might do.

------
praptak
Having skin in the game makes one thoughtful. Sometimes it works in debates
too. "Let's do A, it's much better design." "Will you do the debugging and
support for the feature?" "Ummm, maybe let's rethink this A, I see some flaws
in it."

~~~
idiot74
Could be. With no financial reward there's not much incentive to spend energy
thinking about things: so answers default to supporting political views.
Suddenly there's a financial incentive, and so people take a few more steps in
their thought processes. (maybe, idk)

------
qwrusz
The small payments ranged between 17 cents and $1. But how the payment
calculations were described, based on weirdly complicated raffle entry odds
for gift certificates or with different questions randomly worth 25 cents or
50 cents or whatever with various probabilities.

Frankly, I doubt most participants understood the payments guidance about what
amount correct answers would earn them.

This could imply just putting a paragraph of confusing words with dollar signs
mixed in before asking questions might also diminish political partisan bias
in responses.

~~~
usefulcat
Probably not. The reason they payments appear to work to increase accuracy is
because the possibility of a payment motivates critical thinking abilities--
what Daniel Kahneman, author of _Thinking Fast and Slow_ would refer to as
"system 2".

As described in the book, system 1 is effortless and automatic; it produces
the first thought to come to mind when attempting to answer a question. It is
good at pattern matching and associative memory. However, when faced with a
difficult question, often times the best it is capable of is to answer a
different, easier question instead.

System 2, on the other hand, is the source of effortful, logical thought. It
requires deliberate effort to engage and because of this is often described as
"lazy". In everyday experience, we rely on system 1 most of the time, and most
of the time that works well and is sufficient. An example is reading: an
experienced reader rarely needs to sound out the individual letters of each
word, instead perceiving entire words and phrases at once; that's system 1 at
work.

Now, if you ask someone to answer an objective question that has a partisan
aspect to it, system 1 will immediately provide an answer (without you even
asking it to, and regardless of whether system 1 is actually capable of
providing an accurate answer). In this case, it's likely that system 1 is
actually answering a question which is superficially similar to but not the
same as the one that was asked (e.g., "is this my tribe" instead of "did
deficits increase or decrease during the Clinton administration").

At this point, unless a person chooses to engage system 2, they are likely to
accept the only answer at hand, the one suggested by system 1. The possibility
of receiving a payment for an objectively accurate answer provides motivation
for engaging system 2.

~~~
davidw
This is kind of tangential, but is Michael Lewis' new book _about_ Kahneman
worth reading if you've already read "Thinking Fast And Slow"? I'd certainly
recommend the latter - it's a very interesting book.

~~~
azernik
I listened to an interview he had with Nate Silver, and my impression was that
he focused a lot on the (rather fascinating) personal relationship between
Kahnemann and Amos Tversky. So, as a character study, maybe very interesting;
not sure about its merit as an educational non-fiction piece.

------
droithomme
If someone asks me my opinion about something I'm much more likely to say what
I know they want to hear if they offer to pay me to say that, and I'm less
likely to debate with them instead.

If they aren't paying me, I'm more likely to say what I really think.

~~~
aetherson
Well, the _concept_ here is that they're asking very simple unambiguous
factual questions, so if you know what they "want you to say," then you at
least know the truth, even if you don't believe the truth.

That is: If I ask you what's 3x3, for you to know that the answer that I want
is 9, then you must know the truth.

But I suppose there is some room for nuance. Like, take asking this question:
"Has a human walked on the surface of the moon?"

Let's suppose that Alfred answers that question with "No."

Then you offer to pay Alfred if he answers the question correctly, and he
changes his answer to "Yes."

So, does Alfred _actually_ know that people walked on the moon, and before he
was just trolling or trying to get into the in-crowd of moon-landing deniers?
Or is it that Alfred _actually_ , _sincerely_ believes that the moon-landing
was a fake, but he knows that you likely believe that the moon-landing was
real, and wants the payment?

~~~
aetherson
That said, I don't really believe the moon-landing thing.

Here's my logic:

I'm talking to Alfred, moon-landing-truther. Alfred, I feel, is open in
telling me how it works. He knows that I believe that the moon landing is
real. He acknowledges that there is reason for me to believe that it is real
-- he understands the conventional narrative. He explicitly argues his own
(crazy) counter-narrative that subsumes the conventional narrative,
reinterpreting the facts that I use.

I've never heard anyone articulate a conspiracy theory around the example
questions this study gave. Nobody has ever said to me -- not even online --
"Sure, it _appears_ that inflation decreased during Reagan, but actually,
here's the reason why that's a lie," nor "Sure, it _appears_ that the deficit
shrank during Clinton, but that's a lie."

The closest that I've heard is two things:

1\. A general belief that the media or the establishment lie or shill for Team
X, without specifics.

2\. Not on "inflation during Reagan" or "deficit during Clinton," but I do
sometimes hear conspiracy theories that inflation is not _actually_ currently
low because the way that they calculate it and handle new inventions is a
cheat, or that unemployment is not _actually_ currently low because the proper
measurement of unemployment is workforce participation.

------
emmelaich
Related:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_difference...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissism_of_small_differences)

and

Ecclesiastes 1:2 - All is vanity

------
sharemywin
wonder if there's a way to tease out what I believe versus what I think you
want to hear.

~~~
madenine
Which is scary, given that the survey was about factual information. Welcome
to the post-truth world I guess.

"I think want me to say the unemployment rate is X, so I'll select that, but I
believe the unemployment rate is actually Y"

~~~
tomjen3
When you write it that way it sounds crazy, but if you believe the
unemployment rate should be the U6, then we will have real disagreements over
that fact.

When the media is just the media, no longer the mainstream media, but just the
media with just another (biased) agenda and world-view that is no better than
any others, they end up acting like spoiled children. I hope HNners are smart
enough to realize that all medias are biased in some ways (some more than
others) and that fake news/post truth are just another political term (unless
you are talking about the spam that floated on Facebook with completely fake
headlines, not justified by the content).

~~~
Yen
Whether the unemployment rate discussed and optimized for _should_ be U-6, or
any other particular measure, is a disagreement about opinion, not about fact.

Claims that the U-1 is falsified/manipulated for political purposes, or that
the "real unemployment rate" is actually much higher than even the U-6, are
much more clearly false.

------
jeffdavis
It could also be that people respond based on what they think the "official"
answer is when paid; otherwise they answer what they actually believe.

For instance, there are official measurements of debt, deficit, and inflation.
But some might believe that unfunded liabilities are debt, or that inflation
is higher than the official number.

------
ZeroGravitas
A related finding was that the more scientifically educated an American
conservative is, the more likely they are to deny various elements of climate
change. The conclusion of the researchers was that the smarter respondents
knew what they were supposed to say better as well as knowing the real answer
better.

------
BurningFrog
So I guess this moves the mindset from "argument" towards "truth finding".

Assuming that's true, how could we use that effect for, say, good?

~~~
AlexCoventry
Reducing the tendency of people to lie on survey polls is an obvious
applications. You could ask people to predict how popular a candidate is, with
a payoff tied to prediction accuracy.

------
brownbat
Some issues dismissed as partisan anti-factualism actually mask layers of
nuance.* Political discussion is almost entirely about stressing different
layers of nuance and dismissing or eliding the nuance of your opponents as
irrelevant.

So if you were to ask someone in a survey for their opinion, they might
respond according to their preferred level of nuance on the politically
charged topic, throwing a monkey wrench if the underlying presumption of the
question is overly simplistic. They might provide a contrarian response
because they see the question as loaded, as in "Did you stop beating your
wife?"

An incentive though turns the game into a Keynesian beauty contest, and makes
people fall back on the perceived popular answer, even if they don't think
it's right.

* All the examples of this are incredibly fraught and risk sidetracking the entire discussion. Kindly only read these if you can charitably look for the meta-rhetorical point. But imagine:

Did Trump support the war in Iraq? Depends on whether a half-hearted 'yes' on
Howard Stern really counts.

Did Bill Clinton lower the deficit? Depends on how much you believe the
Republican House forced his hand and was the real actor.

Did Reagan end the cold war? Depends on how much you want to credit internal
political factors or the role of Gorbachev.

Were WMDs found in Iraq? Depends on whether you count sarin-tipped warheads
found in 2005, seed material found at Tuwaitha, or if you're referring
exclusively to the Hans Blix UN investigations or assembled nuclear munitions.

The study designers tried to use careful phrasing to avoid some of these
problems. Even so, there are some questionable ones. "Did inflation rise under
Reagan?" Of course it did! At least once every year! Just not overall...

------
xname2
OK. So Trump is the coming president, and GW is real and Trump will not handle
it properly. So it is very likely GW bad predictions are going to happen. My
question is: why there is no massive sell of beach houses?

a) Most beach house owners are GW deniers. b) Most beach house owners have
strong confidence of the future government. c) Most beach house owners are
extremely rich so they don't care.

How about those who are GW believers, and seriously think it is critical
timing for action rightnow, and have uncertainty about future government, and
are not extremely rich. Are they selling houses and moving to inland?

I think it is a pretty good test of how many people seriously believe GW. Do
not tell me the incentive of home value is not strong enough.

~~~
philipkglass
Individuals are pretty poor at making personal decisions on the basis of risks
that are well-proven numerically but not tangible from personal experience.

Why do millions of Americans still smoke cigarettes? Do most smokers have
awesome health plans and optimism about medical research so they assume that
cancer treatment will be pleasant and affordable in the future? I think it's a
pretty good test of how many people seriously believe cigarettes are
carcinogenic. Do not tell me the incentive of a miserable premature death is
not strong enough.

~~~
xname2
There are people keep smoking, but there are also people quit smoking because
of knowing it's unhealthy.

My question is why don't we see massive sell of beach houses. My question is
NOT why there are still people not selling their beach houses.

------
dhbradshaw
It's worth noting that, unless you're very careful, tying incentives to
answers doesn't filter for "what are the facts" as much as "what do you think
I think are the facts." These can be similar but are not the same thing.

------
Fr0ntBack
For all of you reading whose political knowledge is a little rusty, here is a
quiz for you: [https://www.buzzfeed.com/bennyjohnson/how-well-do-you-
know-b...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/bennyjohnson/how-well-do-you-know-basic-
us-politics?utm_term=.luy4rbRzY#.nlB7odpBM) Unfortunately there is no reward
for correct answers!

~~~
jsight
That doesn't strike me as being a very useful quiz. Would doing well on that
really imply a stronger knowledge of policy?

------
padseeker
So what you are saying is that partisan hacks are aware they are full of crap,
and will openly profess the those very things that they know are bullshit
UNLESS there is a direct financial incentive for them to give the factual
answer? That is depressing.

------
ianai
"The experiments show that small payments for correct and "don't know"
responses sharply diminish the gap between Democrats and Republicans in
responses to "partisan" factual question"

~~~
narrator
This study fails to impress me as anyone with some intelligence would always
pick "don't know" since it's a guaranteed payment.

~~~
alexbock
They performed this with and without that payment.

"This paper reports results from two novel experiments designed to distinguish
sincere from expressive partisan differences in responses to factual
questions. In both experiments, all subjects were asked factual questions, but
some were given financial incentives to answer correctly. ... In our second
experiment, we therefore implement a treatment in which subjects were offered
incentives both for correct responses and for admitting that they did not know
the correct response."

~~~
throwaway729
But if there's no payout then there's no incentive to say don't know. Whereas
if there is a payout then the optimal strategy is clearly "dont know",
assuming equal payouts for correct and dont know. Why would you take the risk
of being wrong?

~~~
hx87
Quote from paper:

> The amount paid for “don’t know” responses was also assigned randomly, and
> was a fraction of the amount offered for a correct response: 20% of the
> payment for a correct response with probability .33, 25% with probability
> .33, and 33% with probability .33.

~~~
throwaway729
Thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for but it's hard on a phone.

Qwrusz's comment may be relevant here.

------
arikrak
It would be interesting if people had to put their money where their mouth was
more often. E.g. if a politician makes a claim about the past or the future,
there should be a way to hold them accountable to it.

~~~
k_lander
This is the basis for prediction markets like Gnosis and Augur. Would be
interesting to see how they play out in practice.

------
insertion
I've wondered why partisanship doesn't exist to nearly the same extent in
business and consumer behavior. This explains a lot.

------
technotarek
Let's start taxing candidates for mis-truths spoken in presidential debates!

------
dbroockman
Good thing voters are incentivized to vote correctly like they were
incentivized to answer correctly in this survey. Oh, wait.

