DECISION 2016 - WILL OUR BIASES DEFINE US?

Many of us will go into the voting booth this November to register our selection for President and various members of Congress. While this exercise should be the culmination of a rational decision making process, a significant number of voters will use shortcuts and vote a straight party ticket. Until the 1960s and 1970s this remained a common occurrence. However, this method used to decide preferences has been in decline as the number of voters registering as "Independent" significantly increased. Nevertheless, Alabama, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas and Utah still accommodate strong partisans by providing a ballot option allowing them to select "vote straight-ticket Democrat" and "vote straight-ticket Republican" to eliminate the need to vote for each race separately. When asked, many of us won't admit that party preference dominates the process we use to select our preferred candidates. We may proclaim that we, without articulating the details, use an intuitive or a rational process to reach our decisions. The intuitive method involves the belief that we have a grasp on the issues, and that we are therefore able to choose without the necessity to reason. The rational process requires greater intellectual involvement. It means systematically selecting among possible choices based on reason and facts. Even though many of us like to think that we listen to all sides of an issue, we don't often recognize the biases and emotions that influence our decisions. The study of ways in which emotional influences help voters make decisions is the subject of inquiry of an interdisciplinary academic field called "Political Psychology."

Some of the emotions recognized in academic studies publicized by researchers in this field include anger, fear and anxiety, emotions observers also idenitify as being prevalent in this year's election cycle. "Anger" is said to increase the use of generalized knowledge and reliance on stereotypes. Voters displaying this emotion tend to be less likely to research a candidate's policy positions. Studies in psychology have shown that voters experiencing "fear," on the other hand, rely more on detailed processing when arriving at choices. "Anxiety" emotes increases in political attentiveness, while decreasing reliance on party affiliation. These voters are more likely to vote for candidates whose policies they prefer, and they are twice as likely to defect and vote for the opposition candidate. In addition, during every election cycle some writers will report that irrelevant events, like football games or the weather, have some influence on voters' choices in the voting booth. While this influence might be minimal, empirical studies have concluded that a win by a local football team during the final ten days of an election cycle on average causes the incumbent party to benefit by an additional 1.6% of the vote. Feeling good benefits the status quo.

Aside from emotions and their basing effect on voting outcomes, other biases producing an inclination toward a particular belief or perspective, often ill-supported by reason of evidence, include conditions we often are not even aware of. The most prevalent one of these is what we refer to as the "confirmation bias." People displaying this bias, and many of us do, have a tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses, while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities. An example would be a reporter writing  an article on an important issue, but only interviewing experts that support her or his views on the subject, or several people on opposite sides of an issue can listen to the exact same story, and walk away with a vastly different interpretation. This bias prevents us from looking at candidates and ideas objectively. We search for information that put our candidates in a positive light, while only reading opinions about the opposing candidate that cast him or her in a negative light. We only listen to and hear what we want to hear.

Among other general biases psychologists identify, a few are also applicable to the voting process. Some voters have a "bias blind spot" - a tendency to think they are less biased than others - the thought that you somehow are above them, smarter, etc. The "halo effect" is another one, and one campaign managers frequently take advantage of. The idea here is that some  people believe that if someone is good at one particular trait, they are also trustworthy in something else that is totally unrelated. This often describes what happens when celebrities become part of a campaign. And then there is the "more exposure effect" - a tendency to like things merely because we are familliar with them, or the belief that since everyone you know believes the way you do, most everybody else does.

Finally, it is a fact that 70% of Americans believe that there is a great deal, or at least a fair amount, of media bias in news coverage. Most of what citizens know about politics comes from what they learn via the media. However, this perception tends to fit comfortably into the "confirmation bias." It is not so much the news media we follow we have a problem with, it is what the "other" media project. We select what channels we tune into. Right-wing voters may tune into FOX NEWS, while left-wing voters turn to MSNBC. Studies tend to show that the left-right bias balances each other out.

So, whether you tend to stick with party preference, as many of us tend to do, or whether you let your emotions determine the outcome of your selection process, be aware of what to be aware of. As long as you plan to vote with your head, follow the steps involved in making this election meaningful.