REPORT
Global uncertainty
Ask yourself… What business positions or people have I
What’s more, Clinton voters who surmised that Trump vot-
dismissed for their apparent “extremity”?
ers put more weight on immigration viewed Trump voters less favorably overall.
Might I have made erroneous inferences about them?
Consider: if someone believes in the border wall and a Muslim ban, they may well have voted for Trump. But it’s weaker,
What additional research could I
logically speaking, to assume that if they voted for Trump, they
do to gain a deeper understanding?
must support his extreme views on immigration. This is essentially turning the tables on cause and effect. Trump voters may, in fact, care more about his infrastructure spending promises. Yet, when extreme views are in the mix, here the co-authors
the availability of jobs, family ties or other factors are less
find evidence that people have inferential blind spots.
important in Florida moves? They find, once again, a tenden-
From political climate to actual climate
cy to conflate value and weight, supporting their main finding that a value-weight heuristic is at play.
To remove politics from the equation, Barasz et al. turned to a more neutral topic: the weather. Their second study asked
Five other studies, involving more than 2,000 participants,
more than 200 participants about the climate in Fort Lauder-
corroborated the main finding that, whether it’s a political
dale, Florida, and Fort Worth, Texas, and how important that
stance or the weather, the more extreme the feature, the eas-
weather was to a hypothetical person’s decision to move there.
ier it is – and the more confident and likely we, as human beings, are – to assume we know what motivated that choice.
As expected, participants who considered the weather more extreme in either location were also likely to give it more
Why is this important? For one thing, political polarization
weight in someone’s decision to move there. Does that mean
seems to be growing, not just in the United States but all around the world. How we come to perceive others’ attitudes – and what we believe they prioritize – may contribute to our
If people infer an entire group is singularly motivated by an especially extreme or divisive policy issue, perceptions of political polarization are only likely to grow
observations of further polarization. This research suggests that the value-weight heuristic may be especially relevant and consequential where extremity, such as intense policy stances and conspicuous platform issues, can distort observers’ perceptions, regardless of party affiliation. That can render observers insensitive to other factors – in addition to or instead of – that could have motivated their choices. In sum, if people infer an entire group is singularly motivated by an especially extreme or divisive policy issue, perceptions of political polarization are only likely to grow. And the more that happens, the less likely it becomes to really understand where the other side is coming from. Making people aware of their inference blind spots or over-inference tendencies could actually help reduce political polarization. Now wouldn’t that be nice?
source: The paper “I Know Why You Voted for Trump: (Over) Inferring Motives Based on Choice,” by Kate Barasz, Tami Kim and Ioannis Evangelidis, is forthcoming in the journal Cognition.
36 | IESE Business School Insight | Winter 2018