JONATHAN CHAIT OCTOBER 20, 2010
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Polls have shown that the public trusts President Obama and Congressional Democrats more than Congressional Republicans. Yet the public is prepared to give the Republicans a huge victory. Why? Shankar Vedantum says it's something called "action bias":
When we are stuck in a bad place, whether that bad place is a marriage, a traffic jam, or a weak economy, it is very tempting to try something new. Psychologists call this the action bias—and it turns out to have surprisingly broad ramifications.
When a company starts losing money, or a whole industry starts losing ground because of a new technology, most of us follow leaders who call for revolutionary change—even if no one really knows what change is needed. Leaders who advocate the status quo look like dinosaurs.
This is why tough times produce radical measures, radical leaders, and radical change. The call for revolution sounds weird in good times, but when things are bad, upending the status quo feels irresistible. We rarely think about selling stocks when their value is rising (when we could lock in our gains) but are enormously tempted to sell, sell, sell when their value starts to fall.
Goalies facing penalty kicks—a bad place to be if you are a goalie—are heavily predisposed to dive to one side or another to save a goal, even though their best odds of saving a goal are when they stay in the center. In one analysis of 293 penalty kicks in elite championship soccer, researchers Michael Bar-Eli, Ofer H. Azar, Ilana Ritov, Yael Keidar-Levin, and Galit Schein found that goalies had a 14 percent chance of stopping a goal when they dived to the left and a 13 percent chance when they dived to the right. The chance of stopping a goal when they stayed in the center was 33 percent. But, like voters and people stuck in traffic jams, goalies facing penalty kicks are drawn to action, not inaction. The analysis of the championship penalty kicks found that goalies stayed in the center only 6 percent of the time.
Why do we habitually choose action over inaction when things are bad? The intuitive answer is that action promises to get us out of the mess we're in. But that intuition turns out to be wrong. The action bias is driven less by the fear of failure than by the fear of regret.
I think there's something to this, and it helps explain the almost monotonic pattern in which voters turn against incumbents when the economy is bad. In fact, voters who disapprove of both President Obama and the Republicans are voting overwhelmingly for the Republicans.
But it's worth recalling that the main factor in this election is not that Republicans have won over disaffected Obama voters. It's that Republicans are planning to vote at higher rates than Democrats. Here's a PPP analysis from August:
The Democrats' big win in 2006 was not driven by the enthusiasm gap, but because a lot of people who had voted for George W. Bush in 2004 switched over to supporting Democratic candidates. According to the 2006 exit poll the electorate that year was actually more heavy on Bush voters than the 2004 electorate that reelected Bush. 49% were Bush voters to only 43% who were Kerry voters, compared to Bush's 51-48 popular vote victory in 2004.
The reason Democrats won even though the electorate disproportionately consisted of Bush voters was that 15% of those Bush voters cast their ballots for a Democrat, a pretty large amount of crossover.
There aren't nearly that many Obama voters leaning toward the Republicans this year. Our last national generic ballot survey found only 8% of people who voted for the President in 2008 were planning to support the GOP this year. But those surveyed represented an electorate that favored Barack Obama by only a point, 46-45, and because of that the generic ballot was tied despite the small number of voters crossing over.
15 comments
A year and a half ago Chait (and many others) questioned whether the Republican Party would survive, given that a Republican Congress and, more importantly, a Republican President had made such a complete mess of things. "Action bias" now explains why, less than two years later, the Republicans not only survive but are likely to take over the House and maybe the Senate. "Action bias"? "Action bias"? "Action bias"? My 14-year old son could come up with a better explanation for why he didn't come home until two hours after his curfew.
- rayward
October 20, 2010 at 7:32pm
It's an important point. One of the sayings I hate is, The definition of insanity is continuing to do something that hasn't worked, or something like that. But, of course, the reason it hasn't worked may not be because of the action in question. Things might have been even a lot worse if you hadn't done that action, and things might have been a lot better if you had done it a lot more, and a lot more forcefully. Or, circumstances might have changed to make it more effective now. Or, fine tuning is best, and would be a lot more effective, not a completely different approach. Or it may just take some time and patience for the thing in question to work. There are lots of possibilities, but people who use this saying tend to be people who don't like to think beyond simple sayings, and it often really hurts them, and our country.
- RHSerlin
October 20, 2010 at 7:40pm
Voting Republican is like drinking Bloody Mary's when you have a three trillion dollar hangover.
- Nusholtz
October 20, 2010 at 7:59pm
Some people are just plain stupid. I heard a 62 year old unemployed woman say that she was going to vote Republican because she "feels" that the Democrats have let her down. What can you say about someone like that? If poor unemployed people think that the Republican will save them then there is little hope for us, and none for them.
- jdyer
October 20, 2010 at 8:27pm
rayward: If there is an argument in here against the "action bias" thesis, then I sure don't see it. You seem to suggest that because Chait underestimated the resilience of the GOP and its ability to come back from near collapse, then anything he offers by way of explanation for the resurrection must be mistaken. It is hard to take this seriously. Maybe the action bias is right and maybe it isn't, but surely whether Chait was accurate in his predictions 18 months ago is not relevant one way or then other.
- thuffman
October 20, 2010 at 9:18pm
I think it's worse Nusholtz. Voting Republican is like hiring a guy to fix your house but he botches the job so badly he's destroyed your home. You hire a 2nd guy that tries to rebuild it in a few months it but can't do it since the 1st guy is heckling him constantly and getting in the way. In desperation, you hire the first idiot that destroyed your home to begin with to take over the job. That, I'm convinced, is the definition of stupidity, short term memory and/or insanity. The American public deserves whatever ill befalls them if they put the GOP back in power.
- tnmats
October 20, 2010 at 10:40pm
You are part of that public too and so am I. Perhaps you deserve what will befall you, but I sure don't.
- jdyer
October 20, 2010 at 11:28pm
A very banal point, but it does seem that this is where the U.S. wall-to-wall two-party system shows its weaknesses. Voters have nowhere else to go, other than back to the GOP, if they want to register a protest. There's no real space in our political map for, say, a party that combines a distrust of government with a progressive attitude on social and family questions, or that combines a belief in states' rights with a strong environmentalist profile.
- ironyroad
October 21, 2010 at 1:14am
perfectly stated, ironyroad! Although us New York voters just discovered we have five very different alternatives to the Dem-GOP duopoly to register our protest for governor. BTW, many voters do think that one-party rule is unhealthy, and the idea is to have one part of government acting as a check on unfettered power. I find it incomprehensible that the Democrats immediately forgot how they regained their majorities in Congress in 2006, and increased them in 2008 - by dropping the ideological litmus tests.
- K2K
October 21, 2010 at 1:44am
I am not questioning the accuracy of Chait's observation two years ago. Rather, I am questioning the contortions to avoid what is in plain sight - a level of political incompetence that is unprecedented. Not Chait, not me, not anybody I know could have foreseen it two years ago. Even now, with it in plain sight, we look for alternative explanations, no matter the contortions. Unless and until the Democrats (and progressives) come to grips with the reality of the political fiasco that is inevitable (and, unfortunately, the policy fiasco that will follow), Democrats (and progressives) and the nation will suffer the consequences.
- rayward
October 21, 2010 at 8:05am
Chait is wrong again: He is becoming the poster liberal for cognitive bias -- confirmation bias, attentional bias, etc.... While I know he's not very smart, you would think he could seek out multiple and better data sources to support his hypothesis. Take a look at a recent latest Gallup poll on voter support. 43% of Dems are voting Dem due to party loyalty and dislike of Repubs; only 26% of Repubs are voting Repub due to same. Overall, Repubs votes much more rational -- and don't rely on blind loyalty and dislike. Hopefully link came through: http://www.gallup.com/poll/143396/Party-Loyalty-Primary-Factor-Democratic-Vote-2010.aspx
- mr_rationale
October 21, 2010 at 9:29am
I am not even allowed to vote, and I'll bear as much of this nonsense as anyone. The average American may deserve something bad, but there are a great many Americans that aren't average, and I also hasten to point out that the democratic political apparatus should shoulder somewhat more of the blame for any apocalypse than should Joseph R. Average of Canton, Ohio. Unfortunately, Mr. Average is much more easily replaced than are the Dems and is not Too Much The Only Alternative to Pure Evil To Fail. Thus, Mr. Average will get much more of the crap.
- miceelf
October 21, 2010 at 11:03am
Rationale, you are a recurrent joke. Of course Republicans run on blind loyalty, often enough. They manage discipline much better than the Democrats do; I should think that this is something you would celebrate. Large numbers of Republicans were behind the huge expansion in executive power that the Bushies presided over, all of the while proclaiming fealty to the virtues of small government. You just aren't very smart and so you cast aspersions on the intelligence of others.
- liberal reformer
October 21, 2010 at 1:36pm
ironyroad "A very banal point, but it does seem that this is where the U.S. wall-to-wall two-party system shows its weaknesses. Voters have nowhere else to go, other than back to the GOP, if they want to register a protest. " This isn't true, Irony. In a lot of States there is a panoply of small parties listed on the ballot. Still, assuming you are correct why would a voter who knows that one party will make life harder for him for that party? If these voters are disappointed with the Democrats they could always decline to vote as many Black and Latino voters will probably do.
- jdyer
October 21, 2010 at 3:16pm
There's always the Rent is Too Damn High party, and the Greens would actually be useful for once, if they were the repository of protest votes.
- miceelf
October 22, 2010 at 9:24am