I think this is complicated by the reality that money given to the parties isn’t spent directly on solving problems, but on fighting for power. The opinion that “the political parties should have less money on average, and my party should have relatively more money than their party” seems eminently reasonable to me.
I asked one of the authors about this. She acknowledged that some respondants do say they’d like to see less money in politics. However, she also pointed out that in the win/win scenario, people choose to have their own party gain a dollar and leave the opposition alone, rather than leaving their own side alone and subtracting $1 from the opposition. So people are not consistently choosing to decrease the amount of money in politics. This makes respondant claims that this was their objective in the lose-lose scenario sound like post-hoc rationalizations to me.
In the win-win condition, which serves as an experimental control to conceptually replicate prior findings (5, 6), both options altered the donation in ways that were favorable given the participant’s stated attitude: either add $1 to the donation going to the organization on their side or subtract $1 from the donation going to the organization on the opposing side.
I disagree—the proportion of people citing “less money in politics” or “I hate both parties on principle” as reasons for taking from their own side in the “lose-lose” condition is roughly the same as the proportion of people taking from the opposition in the “win-win” condition. I think these were basically the same people, so no post-hoc justification is needed.
The remainder of the “lose-lose” takers basically just say variants of “it feels less bad/cheap/traitorous to take from our own side than to give to the opposition”, a situation that doesn’t exist in the “win-win” condition.
Let’s step back and look at what we’re debating. You’re seeing that a few people just don’t like political donations. They want to see less money in politics. They’re clear on this, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a win/win or a lose/lose situation—they just want to see fewer dollars being wasted on attack ads. They’d ideally like both parties to spend less.
When I look at this study, I see that most people behave like they agree with them, at least in lose-lose situations. But in win-win situations, people take the dollar they’re offered for their own side instead of burning one of their opponents’ dollars.
So some people clearly do want to see less money in politics, and that no doubt is how some of them picked their responses in this study. But most people just aren’t acting as if that was top of mind for them. One way to make sense of it all is to say that people see the study questions as a loyalty test. Some quirk of the human brain makes them see “giving” their opponents a dollar in the lose-lose situation as feeling more traitorous than “losing” a dollar for their own side. But “getting” a dollar for their own side feels more loyal than “destroying” a dollar for their opponents.
That seems psychologically plausible to me. “Giving” your opponents a dollar smacks of “aid and comfort to the enemy,” while “losing” a dollar for your own side feels like at worst a blunder, and at most a necessary cost paid out of prudence, in a way that goes beyond financial accounting. On the other hand, “getting” a dollar for your own side feels like you’re bringing home the bacon. You’re a provider, and you might expect to gain status. “Destorying” one of the enemy’s dollars feels at best like counting coup, but at worst like you’re being a thief or you’re not playing by the rules. Maybe some people will pat you on the back for it. But it might also trigger some kind of vendetta by the other side. Maybe it’s more trouble than its worth.
I don’t think people go through a thought process like this consciously—this is me channeling my subconscious associations when I consider the options.
Yes, I basically agree with your first two paragraphs. However, I disagree that the evidence shows people are using post-hoc justifications in the lose-lose condition. There is no need for that hypothesis. If the “less money in politics” people in the lose-lose condition also took money in the win-win condition but everyone else switched, we would get similar results to that actually observed.
I don’t know if I even disagree with your explanation for the different results between the win-win and lose-lose conditions. I’m modeling this off of existing models of taboo violation. Breaking “mundane taboos” like “donating less/no money” are always preferred over “sacred taboos” like “donating to the opposition” or “stealing, even from the opposition”. So the more politically active someone is, the more likely they are to view “donating less” as a sacred taboo, since the more politically active someone is, the more they are exposed to requests for political donations and hence ignore them. The difference is mostly in the framing—my framing is that, in reality, causing there to be less donations to your side doesn’t feel like a taboo, since it’s something people do implicitly anyways. This is all that is needed to explain our results, and I think the simplest, most elegant, and least counter-intuitive.
We might actually have the same models, with the only difference being the viscousness implied. The real question is where they differ, and what different predictions they give. I think the best way to resolve this is a followup study that directly asks people what each option makes them feel emotionally, and how much.
I think we agree on the taboo/loyalty test thing, and I don’t have strong, considered, specific views on the details of people’s psychological state—I don’t think the results of a “how each option makes them feel emotionally” study is likely to surprise me, because I just don’t have very articulate or confident views on that level of granularity.
I’m still not quite sure what you’re pointing out with the “less money in politics” thing explaining these results. Is that something you can spell out point by point, maybe giving specific numbers from the study to buttress your argument? I realize that’s a big ask, I understand if you don’t want to take the trouble.
~20% of people were explicitly “less money in politics” in the lose-lose condition. This explains why ~20% of people took away money in the win-win condition, because it was the same people. That’s it. It doesn’t explain anything else. I just brought it up because it was interesting. While everyone else was having to struggle with difficult emotions, they just pressed the button to take away money, in line with their values. This was funny to me.
Let’s say we kicked the “less money in politics” crowd out of the study. If they were 20% of the respondents, I believe that about half the remaining people would have chosen each option. Which starts to look like it’s pretty arbitrary, not a sign of some deep seated psychological quirk. I’ll have to ask the author about that—thanks for explaining!
After thinking about this more, I actually think there is a counter to that. The fifth study showed that people are really conforming to a norm, real or imagined. If they were really acting on their own individual preferences, then it seems like telling them their own side thinks it’s important not to lose money, even though the other side gains money, ought not to be able to so thoroughly alter the choices they make.
What we probably need is an explanation for:
Why people conform so strongly to the perceived norm.
Why people imagine the norm is to sacrifice money for your own side to keep money out of the hands of the opponents.
The explanation for (1) seems to be an overriding desire to maintain their sense of political identity. But the explanation for (2) might be that, all else equal, they think it’s sensible to diminish the amount of money wasted on politics. But if (1) dominates, then if they think the norm is to put money into politics, they’ll do that instead.
I think this is complicated by the reality that money given to the parties isn’t spent directly on solving problems, but on fighting for power. The opinion that “the political parties should have less money on average, and my party should have relatively more money than their party” seems eminently reasonable to me.
I asked one of the authors about this. She acknowledged that some respondants do say they’d like to see less money in politics. However, she also pointed out that in the win/win scenario, people choose to have their own party gain a dollar and leave the opposition alone, rather than leaving their own side alone and subtracting $1 from the opposition. So people are not consistently choosing to decrease the amount of money in politics. This makes respondant claims that this was their objective in the lose-lose scenario sound like post-hoc rationalizations to me.
I disagree—the proportion of people citing “less money in politics” or “I hate both parties on principle” as reasons for taking from their own side in the “lose-lose” condition is roughly the same as the proportion of people taking from the opposition in the “win-win” condition. I think these were basically the same people, so no post-hoc justification is needed.
The remainder of the “lose-lose” takers basically just say variants of “it feels less bad/cheap/traitorous to take from our own side than to give to the opposition”, a situation that doesn’t exist in the “win-win” condition.
Let’s step back and look at what we’re debating. You’re seeing that a few people just don’t like political donations. They want to see less money in politics. They’re clear on this, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a win/win or a lose/lose situation—they just want to see fewer dollars being wasted on attack ads. They’d ideally like both parties to spend less.
When I look at this study, I see that most people behave like they agree with them, at least in lose-lose situations. But in win-win situations, people take the dollar they’re offered for their own side instead of burning one of their opponents’ dollars.
So some people clearly do want to see less money in politics, and that no doubt is how some of them picked their responses in this study. But most people just aren’t acting as if that was top of mind for them. One way to make sense of it all is to say that people see the study questions as a loyalty test. Some quirk of the human brain makes them see “giving” their opponents a dollar in the lose-lose situation as feeling more traitorous than “losing” a dollar for their own side. But “getting” a dollar for their own side feels more loyal than “destroying” a dollar for their opponents.
That seems psychologically plausible to me. “Giving” your opponents a dollar smacks of “aid and comfort to the enemy,” while “losing” a dollar for your own side feels like at worst a blunder, and at most a necessary cost paid out of prudence, in a way that goes beyond financial accounting. On the other hand, “getting” a dollar for your own side feels like you’re bringing home the bacon. You’re a provider, and you might expect to gain status. “Destorying” one of the enemy’s dollars feels at best like counting coup, but at worst like you’re being a thief or you’re not playing by the rules. Maybe some people will pat you on the back for it. But it might also trigger some kind of vendetta by the other side. Maybe it’s more trouble than its worth.
I don’t think people go through a thought process like this consciously—this is me channeling my subconscious associations when I consider the options.
Yes, I basically agree with your first two paragraphs. However, I disagree that the evidence shows people are using post-hoc justifications in the lose-lose condition. There is no need for that hypothesis. If the “less money in politics” people in the lose-lose condition also took money in the win-win condition but everyone else switched, we would get similar results to that actually observed.
I don’t know if I even disagree with your explanation for the different results between the win-win and lose-lose conditions. I’m modeling this off of existing models of taboo violation. Breaking “mundane taboos” like “donating less/no money” are always preferred over “sacred taboos” like “donating to the opposition” or “stealing, even from the opposition”. So the more politically active someone is, the more likely they are to view “donating less” as a sacred taboo, since the more politically active someone is, the more they are exposed to requests for political donations and hence ignore them. The difference is mostly in the framing—my framing is that, in reality, causing there to be less donations to your side doesn’t feel like a taboo, since it’s something people do implicitly anyways. This is all that is needed to explain our results, and I think the simplest, most elegant, and least counter-intuitive.
We might actually have the same models, with the only difference being the viscousness implied. The real question is where they differ, and what different predictions they give. I think the best way to resolve this is a followup study that directly asks people what each option makes them feel emotionally, and how much.
I think we agree on the taboo/loyalty test thing, and I don’t have strong, considered, specific views on the details of people’s psychological state—I don’t think the results of a “how each option makes them feel emotionally” study is likely to surprise me, because I just don’t have very articulate or confident views on that level of granularity.
I’m still not quite sure what you’re pointing out with the “less money in politics” thing explaining these results. Is that something you can spell out point by point, maybe giving specific numbers from the study to buttress your argument? I realize that’s a big ask, I understand if you don’t want to take the trouble.
~20% of people were explicitly “less money in politics” in the lose-lose condition. This explains why ~20% of people took away money in the win-win condition, because it was the same people. That’s it. It doesn’t explain anything else. I just brought it up because it was interesting. While everyone else was having to struggle with difficult emotions, they just pressed the button to take away money, in line with their values. This was funny to me.
Gotcha.
Let’s say we kicked the “less money in politics” crowd out of the study. If they were 20% of the respondents, I believe that about half the remaining people would have chosen each option. Which starts to look like it’s pretty arbitrary, not a sign of some deep seated psychological quirk. I’ll have to ask the author about that—thanks for explaining!
After thinking about this more, I actually think there is a counter to that. The fifth study showed that people are really conforming to a norm, real or imagined. If they were really acting on their own individual preferences, then it seems like telling them their own side thinks it’s important not to lose money, even though the other side gains money, ought not to be able to so thoroughly alter the choices they make.
What we probably need is an explanation for:
Why people conform so strongly to the perceived norm.
Why people imagine the norm is to sacrifice money for your own side to keep money out of the hands of the opponents.
The explanation for (1) seems to be an overriding desire to maintain their sense of political identity. But the explanation for (2) might be that, all else equal, they think it’s sensible to diminish the amount of money wasted on politics. But if (1) dominates, then if they think the norm is to put money into politics, they’ll do that instead.
I agree, I think that is an important alternative explanation that AFAIK the authors did not adequately explore.