Jonathan, Interesting... But what the study doesn't test is whether the respondents were answering "sincerely." ;-)
But seriously, it would be important to extend the experiment to find out if the respondents would ACT on that pessimistic statement that flies in the face of probability, or if they were making a mildly humorous statement as in "I forgot my umbrella, so it will probably rain." Terry Bouricius ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jonathan Lundell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Election Methods" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 8:17 PM Subject: [EM] another reason to avoid strategic motivations ...or at least to avoid methods that encourage strategic voting, is that voters are so bad at it. I blogged a rather dismaying study the other day on the subject of people's tendency to irrationally misjudge probabilities when they have a stake in the outcome. I wouldn't want to draw too close a parallel between this and any particular election method. Rather, it's something to keep in mind when we talk about voters trying to make strategic calculations that they're not really competent, in general, to make. Notice also that there's a systematic bias; it's not just that the subjects are wrong in a random way that might tend to cancel out. http://pragmatos.net/2008/11/29/pessimistic-voters/ ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info ---- Election-Methods mailing list - see http://electorama.com/em for list info
