Sources of Bias in Retrospective Decision Making: Experimental Evidence on Voters’ Limitations in Controlling Incumbents

Huber, Gregory A.; Hill, Seth J.; Lenz, Gabriel

doi:10.1017/s0003055412000391

Cited by 231 publications

(150 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…Second, empirical and experimental evidence provides strong support for the existence of such bias (e.g. Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier, 2000;Huber et al, 2012;Healy and Lenz, 2014). Third, in this version of the model, the recency bias directly enters voters' utility function, i.e.…”

Section: Setupmentioning

confidence: 84%

Guns and Votes

Bouton

Conconi

Pino

et al. 2014

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Why are U.S. congressmen reluctant to support gun control regulations, despite the fact that most Americans are in favor of them? We argue that re-election motives can lead politicians to take a pro-gun stance against the interests of an apathetic majority of the electorate, but in line with the interests of an intense minority. We develop a model of gun control choices in which incumbent politicians are both office and policy motivated, and voters differ in the direction and intensity of their preferences. We derive conditions under which politicians support gun control early in their terms, but oppose them when they approach re-election. We test the predictions of the model by analyzing votes on gun-related legislation in the U.S. Senate, in which one third of the members are up for re-election every two years. We find that senators are more likely to vote pro gun when they are close to facing re-election, a result which holds comparing both across and within legislators. Only Democratic senators "flip flop'' on gun control, and only if the group of pro-gun voters in their constituency is of intermediate size.

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Section: Setupmentioning

confidence: 84%

Guns and Votes

Bouton

Conconi

Pino

et al. 2014

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“…For instance, Project Implicit's data collection and educational website on topics of implicit group attitudes and beliefs (http://implicit.harvard.edu) has been in use since 1998 and has gathered data from over 15 million tests. However, the issues addressed by online research studies are not restricted to implicit social bias (Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald, 2002); they range from voters' competence at assessing incumbent politicians (Huber, Hill, & Lenz, 2012) to life satisfaction (Peterson, Park, & Seligman, 2005), from emotion in decision making (Seo & Barrett, 2007) to personality (Buchanan, Johnson, & Goldberg, 2005), and from compulsive hoarding (Frost, Tolin, Steketee, Fitch, & SelboBruns, 2009) to the prevention of sexually transmitted diseases (Pequegnat et al, 2007).…”

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confidence: 99%

Introducing the Open Affective Standardized Image Set (OASIS)

2016

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We introduce the Open Affective Standardized Image Set (OASIS), an open-access online stimulus set containing 900 color images depicting a broad spectrum of themes, including humans, animals, objects, and scenes, along with normative ratings on two affective dimensions-valence (i.e., the degree of positive or negative affective response that the image evokes) and arousal (i.e., the intensity of the affective response that the image evokes). The OASIS images were collected from online sources, and valence and arousal ratings were obtained in an online study (total N = 822). The valence and arousal ratings covered much of the circumplex space and were highly reliable and consistent across gender groups. OASIS has four advantages: (a) the stimulus set contains a large number of images in four categories; (b) the data were collected in 2015, and thus OASIS features more current images and reflects more current ratings of valence and arousal than do existing stimulus sets; (c) the OASIS database affords users the ability to interactively explore images by category and ratings; and, most critically, (d) OASIS allows for free use of the images in online and offline research studies, as they are not subject to the copyright restrictions that apply to the International Affective Picture System. The OASIS images, along with normative valence and arousal ratings, are available for download from www.benedekkurdi.com/#oasis or https://db.tt/yYTZYCga.

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“…Fiorina, 1981;Weingast et al, 1981;Ferejohn, 1986;Shepsle et al, 2009) and by empirical and experimental studies (e.g. Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier, 2000;Huber et al, 2012;Healy and Lenz, 2014).…”

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confidence: 99%

Suspiciously timed trade disputes

Conconi

DeRemer

Kirchsteiger

et al. 2017

Journal of International Economics

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This paper shows that electoral incentives affect the occurrence of trade disputes. Focusing on WTO disputes filed by the United States during the 1995-2012 period, we show that U.S.presidents are more likely to initiate a dispute in the year preceding their re-election date.Moreover, disputes filed by the U.S. tend to target industries that are important to swing states in the presidential election. To explain these regularities, we develop a theoretical model in which an incumbent can file a trade dispute to appeal to voters motivated by reciprocity. The incumbent's ability to initiate a dispute during the re-election campaign provides an advantage over the challenger, who cannot commit to file the dispute if elected. If voters' ideological preferences are not too strong in favor of either candidate, the incumbent will file a trade dispute to increase his re-election chances. To explain these regularities, we develop a theoretical model in which an incumbent can file a trade dispute to appeal to voters motivated by reciprocity. The incumbent's ability to initiate a dispute during the re-election campaign provides an advantage over the challenger, who cannot commit to file the dispute if elected. If voters' ideological preferences are not too strong in favor of either candidate, the incumbent will file a trade dispute to increase his re-election chances.JEL classifications: F13, D72, D78, D63.

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Sources of Bias in Retrospective Decision Making: Experimental Evidence on Voters’ Limitations in Controlling Incumbents

Cited by 231 publications

References 69 publications

Guns and Votes

Guns and Votes

Introducing the Open Affective Standardized Image Set (OASIS)

Suspiciously timed trade disputes

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