Small payments sharply diminish gap in responses to partisan factual questions

&quot;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.&quot;<p>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&#x27;s possible that someone is hearing &quot;did the debt rise during clinton&quot; (which would be true). Likewise, inflation is the derivative of the value of money. So someone might be hearing &quot;did things get more expensive over reagan&quot; (which would also be true). The deficit&#x2F;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.

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 &#x27;The Myth of the Rational Voter&#x27; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter</a>

Having skin in the game makes one thoughtful. Sometimes it works in debates too. &quot;Let&#x27;s do A, it&#x27;s much better design.&quot; &quot;Will you do the debugging and support for the feature?&quot; &quot;Ummm, maybe let&#x27;s rethink this A, I see some flaws in it.&quot;

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

If someone asks me my opinion about something I&#x27;m much more likely to say what I know they want to hear if they offer to pay me to say that, and I&#x27;m less likely to debate with them instead.<p>If they aren&#x27;t paying me, I&#x27;m more likely to say what I really think.

Related: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Narcissism_of_small_differences" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Narcissism_of_small_difference...</a><p>and<p>Ecclesiastes 1:2 - All is vanity

wonder if there&#x27;s a way to tease out what I believe versus what I think you want to hear.

It could also be that people respond based on what they think the &quot;official&quot; answer is when paid; otherwise they answer what they actually believe.<p>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.

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.

So I guess this moves the mindset from &quot;argument&quot; towards &quot;truth finding&quot;.<p>Assuming that&#x27;s true, how could we use that effect for, say, good?

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.<p>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 &quot;Did you stop beating your wife?&quot;<p>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&#x27;t think it&#x27;s right.<p>* 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:<p>Did Trump support the war in Iraq? Depends on whether a half-hearted &#x27;yes&#x27; on Howard Stern really counts.<p>Did Bill Clinton lower the deficit? Depends on how much you believe the Republican House forced his hand and was the real actor.<p>Did Reagan end the cold war? Depends on how much you want to credit internal political factors or the role of Gorbachev.<p>Were WMDs found in Iraq? Depends on whether you count sarin-tipped warheads found in 2005, seed material found at Tuwaitha, or if you&#x27;re referring exclusively to the Hans Blix UN investigations or assembled nuclear munitions.<p>The study designers tried to use careful phrasing to avoid some of these problems. Even so, there are some questionable ones. &quot;Did inflation rise under Reagan?&quot; Of course it did! At least once every year! Just not overall...

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?<p>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&#x27;t care.<p>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?<p>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.

It&#x27;s worth noting that, unless you&#x27;re very careful, tying incentives to answers doesn&#x27;t filter for &quot;what are the facts&quot; as much as &quot;what do you think I think are the facts.&quot; These can be similar but are not the same thing.

For all of you reading whose political knowledge is a little rusty, here is a quiz for you: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.buzzfeed.com&#x2F;bennyjohnson&#x2F;how-well-do-you-know-basic-us-politics?utm_term=.luy4rbRzY#.nlB7odpBM" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.buzzfeed.com&#x2F;bennyjohnson&#x2F;how-well-do-you-know-b...</a> Unfortunately there is no reward for correct answers!

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.

&quot;The experiments show that small payments for correct and &quot;don&#x27;t know&quot; responses sharply diminish the gap between Democrats and Republicans in responses to &quot;partisan&quot; factual question&quot;

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.

I&#x27;ve wondered why partisanship doesn&#x27;t exist to nearly the same extent in business and consumer behavior. This explains a lot.

Let&#x27;s start taxing candidates for mis-truths spoken in presidential debates!

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