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Cognitive biases are going to skew these numbers horribly I guess I thought the point of the article was to demonstrate exactly this skew. Where does a person
by jfager 16y ago
Cognitive biases are going to skew these numbers horribly
I guess I thought the point of the article was to demonstrate exactly this skew.
Where does a person's emotional reaction to tax cuts or welfare come from? If people casually think that poor people aren't as poor as they really are and that wealthy people aren't as wealthy as they really are, they're going to act accordingly when it comes up in their daily life. How they actually think when forced to confront real numbers seems less relevant in that case - how many people actually sit down and do the math before deciding who to vote for?
- waqf 16y agoYou missed my point, or at least part of my point. The point is that the numbers people write down in this survey will not accurately represent their own impression of how poor poor people are.
- jfager 16y agoI don't think I missed your point - you're saying that people confronted with a question they aren't qualified or interested in enough to answer thoughtfully will be biased towards responses that "sound good". I have no disagreement there, I'm just saying that it's still interesting to know what that incorrect "sounds good" answer is in this case, because it reflects how people casually regard an issue. My unsubstantiated hypothesis is that this casual regard may actually be more important anyways, because many people aren't thoughtful in their regular daily lives, either. In other words: if a cognitive bias can affect how someone responds to a survey, why can't it affect how that same someone acts in their daily lives?