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

Kate  Barasz; Tami  Kim; Ioannis  Evangelidis

Article | Cognition | July 2019

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

by Kate Barasz, Tami Kim and Ioannis Evangelidis

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;

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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.

In February 2020, Time Out’s chief executive officer Julio Bruno is evaluating the strategic direction of the company. Over the span of five decades, Time Out—the global media and entertainment brand—had gone from a self-published counterculture publication in London to a leading authority on the arts and culture, food and drink, music, and nightlife scenes in hundreds of cities around the world. However, the rise of the internet meant fundamentally rethinking the type of content Time Out offered, and their historical reliance on media-generated revenue put them in a precarious position amidst an industry-wide “media apocalypse.” To maintain relevance and diversify their revenue, the company launched Time Out Market, a collection of sleek food halls that housed between 14 and 32 restaurants and quite literally brought the Time Out Magazine to life. As a self-described “platform-agnostic” brand, the move marked Time Out’s transition to “phyigital” (physical + digital) business, and promised the possibility of synergies between the Media and Market divisions. They initially opened Markets in six cities, with a long-term plan to expand much further. However, strategic questions loom. How should Time Out manage its global brand? How could they ensure that Media drove customers to the Markets, and vice versa? More existentially, what was the role of their legacy Media division going forward?

Article | Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | June 23, 2020

Inequality in Socially Permissible Consumption

Serena Hagerty and Kate Barasz

Lower-income individuals are frequently criticized for their consumption decisions; this research examines why. Eleven preregistered studies document systematic differences in permissible consumption—interpersonal judgments about what is acceptable (or not) for others to consume—such that lower-income individuals’ decisions are subject to more negative and restrictive evaluations. Indeed, the same consumption decisions may be deemed less permissible for a lower-income individual than for an individual with higher or unknown income (Studies 1A & 1B)—even when purchased with windfall funds. This gap persists among participants from a large, nationally representative sample (Study 2) and when testing a broad array of “everyday” consumption items (Study 3). Additional studies investigate why: the same items are often perceived as less necessary for lower- (versus higher-) income individuals (Studies 4 & 5). Combining both permissibility and perceived necessity, further studies (Studies 6 & 7) demonstrate a causal link between the two constructs: a purchase decision will be deemed permissible (or not) to the extent that it is perceived as necessary (or not). However, because—for lower-income individuals—fewer items are perceived as necessary, fewer are therefore socially permissible to consume. This finding not only exposes a fraught double standard, but also portends consequential behavioral implications: people prefer to allocate strictly “necessary” items to lower-income recipients (Study 8)—even if such items are objectively and subjectively less valuable (Studies 9A & 9B)—which may result in an imbalanced and inefficient provision of resources to the poor.

Keywords: interpersonal judgments; consumption; Economic inequalty; Income; Equality and Inequality; Spending; Judgments;

Citation:

Hagerty, Serena, and Kate Barasz. "Inequality in Socially Permissible Consumption." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117, no. 25 (June 23, 2020): 14084–14093. View Details

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

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