Can Accurate Knowledge Reduce Wishful Thinking in Voters' Predictions of Election Outcomes?

Abstract

About 3,000 Israeli voters were asked to predict the outcomes of the 1992 general election and to state their political preference. Political science students were found to possess more accurate knowledge than education students about some outcomes of the previous (1 988) election, but the predictions made by both groups varied as a function of their preferences, indicating a wishful thinking effect. Wishful thinking effects of the same magnitude were found for groups differing in the accuracy of their knowledge about the outcomes of the previous election and for respondents who had been provided with partial or full base-rate information about the outcomes of the previous election. Thus, accurate knowledge did not reduce the effects of wishful preferences on predictions. Respondents' predictions differed from the results of public opinion polls published at the same time in the Israeli printed media. The results were more compatible with a motivational than with a purely cognitive interpretation.

The ostrich effect: Selective attention to information

“…There is also ample evidence from psychology that desires exert a powerful influence on beliefs, a phenomenon that psychologists call "motivated reasoning" (Kruglanski 1996;Babad 1995;Babad and Katz 1991;Kunda 1990). Economists, too, have been interested in motivated formation of beliefs, but have focused more on modeling the phenomenon than on studying it empirically.…”

The Formation of Economic Perceptions in Post-Communist Countries of East Central Europe

“…However, the investigation of the role of knowledge in attenuating the effect of wishful thinking has yielded mixed results. Whereas Granberg and Brent (1983) found that in US presidential elections wishful thinking was strongest among poorly informed citizens, Babad (1995) was unable to support this finding in his study of the 1992 Israeli election.…”

“…Dolan and Holbrook (2001) have aptly described the debate about the sources of public opinion as the role of affect versus cognition in the formation of perceptions. In the absence of cognitive resources, but arguably even when such resources are present (Kahneman et al 1982;Babad 1995), individuals tend to resort to emotion, affect, and predispositions to help them form judgments (Lavine et al 2005). As a general rule, people tend to fit their perceptions of reality into their preexisting picture of the world or a set of longstanding preferences (Dolan and Holbrook 2001), thus achieving cognitive consistency (Festinger 1957).…”

“…In a series of experiments, social psychologists revealed that wishful thinking is widely present among sports fans and even sports bettors who ignore the odds of their favorite team to win (Babad 1987;Babad and Katz 1991). In electoral studies, the effect of wishful thinking has been explored in the U.S., Sweden, Israel and other democratic states (Granberg and Brent 1983;Babad et al 1992;Babad and Yacobos 1993;Babad 1995). All of the authors registered the operation of a wishful thinking mechanism among voters in predicting election outcomes.…”

“…common to think that political sophistication gives people more intellectual and material resources to form accurate evaluations of the reality and act rationally. Empirical studies of the mediating effect of political sophistication on the formation of public opinion, however, have yielded mixed results (Zaller 1992;Babad 1995;Kumlin 2001;Baum 2002). Karp et al (2003), for instance, found that more and less politically aware persons base their evaluations of the EU on different factors.…”