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The psychological foundations of rational ignorance: biased heuristics and decision costs

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Abstract

Rational ignorance and related models of voter choice have been accused of psychological implausibility or even incoherence. Although such models run counter to folk psychological understandings of choice, this paper argues that they are consistent with widely-accepted dual process theories of cognition. Specifically, I suggest that political ignorance can be explained via a “default-interventionist” account in which a biased intuitive subsystem produces automatic responses which are overridden by rational reflection when the prospective costs of error are significant. This is consistent with rational ignorance and related theories of political ignorance and bias. Providing stronger psychological foundations for rational ignorance also suggests new ways in which the theory might be developed to increase its predictive, analytic, and evaluative power.

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Notes

  1. Caplan’s suggestion here is a precursor to the argument of this paper. Somin (2016, pp. 84–82, 92–97) provides a more detailed explanation of why it can be rational for people to hold beliefs which they recognize are not fully informed and rational and which could potentially change if they held more information. Caplan and Somin should both be considered important precursors to this paper, but neither connect their ideas to the dual process literature. This is the main contribution of this paper.

  2. “Linda is more likely to be a bank teller than she is to be a feminist bank teller, because every feminist bank teller is a bank teller, but some women bank tellers are not feminists, and Linda could be one of them” (Tversky and Kahneman 1983, p. 299).

  3. The analysis here is based on the formal work of Riker and Ordeshook (1968) and Gersbach (1995).

  4. The analysis could also be extended to the election of candidates, but there are some complicating factors which might make the effects of incentives and feedback different in each case. On one hand, voters can use shortcuts such as candidate party to judge ideological position and simplify voting choices (Lupia 1994; Lupia and McCubbins 1998; Popkin 1995). This would lower the cognitive effort required to reach a better decision. On the other hand, candidates bundle many policies together and this complicates any calculus of instrumental benefits while also limiting learning opportunities with respect to particular issues. The very general conclusion of this paper applies to both issue-based and candidate-based voting, although the strength of incentives and feedback could differ quite a lot. An analysis of these effects would, I think, require careful empirical analysis.

  5. It should be noted that these authors interpret their results as showing that partisan bias is not sincere. This is a possible interpretation, but a dual process interpretation is more plausible given our other psychological knowledge and introspective evidence which suggests partisans really do disagree on matters of fact. See also Prior and Lupia (2008) on the effect of incentives and learning opportunities on survey measurements of political knowledge.

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  1. School of Commerce, University of Southern Queensland, Springfield, QLD, Australia

    Brad R. Taylor

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Taylor, B.R. The psychological foundations of rational ignorance: biased heuristics and decision costs. Const Polit Econ 31, 70–88 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10602-019-09292-4

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