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  • July 2019
  • Article
  • Cognition

I Know Why You Voted for Trump: (Over)inferring Motives Based on Choice

By: Kate Barasz, Tami Kim and Ioannis Evangelidis
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Abstract

People often speculate about why others make the choices they do. This paper investigates how such inferences are formed as a function of what is chosen. Specifically, when observers encounter someone else's choice (e.g., of political candidate), they use the chosen option's attribute values (e.g., a candidate's specific stance on a policy issue) to infer the importance of that attribute (e.g., the policy issue) to the decision-maker. Consequently, when a chosen option has an attribute whose value is extreme (e.g., an extreme policy stance), observers infer—sometimes incorrectly—that this attribute disproportionately motivated the decision-maker's choice. Seven studies demonstrate how observers use an attribute's value to infer its weight—the value-weight heuristic—and identify the role of perceived diagnosticity: more extreme attribute values give observers the subjective sense that they know more about a decision-maker's preferences and, in turn, increase the attribute's perceived importance. The paper explores how this heuristic can produce erroneous inferences and influence broader beliefs about decision-makers.

Keywords

Self-other Difference; Social Perception; Inference-making; Preferences; Consumer Behavior; Prediction; Prediction Error; Decision Choices and Conditions; Perception; Behavior; Forecasting and Prediction

Citation

Barasz, Kate, Tami Kim, and Ioannis Evangelidis. "I Know Why You Voted for Trump: (Over)inferring Motives Based on Choice." Special Issue on The Cognitive Science of Political Thought. Cognition 188 (July 2019): 85–97.
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More from the Authors
  • Calculators for Women: When Identity-Based Appeals Backfire By: Tami Kim, Kate Barasz, Michael I. Norton and Leslie K. John
  • Hoping for the Worst? A Paradoxical Preference for Bad News By: Kate Barasz and Serena Hagerty
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