Psychology of voting - Do the biases have it?

Voting is important and for most IB students, it is something you will soon be able to do. But are you ready? How will you decide who (or what) to vote for?

Most of us would agree that deciding who is running our country is a task for system 2 - careful consideration of all of the possibilities to make sure we are making the best choice. Is this what really happens?

The world of cognitive biases is perhaps the favourite playground of all psychologists - so many cool names, so many interesting behaviours, so much evidence. We know that humans often make decisions which may not be sensible, even though they have an internal logic and a fair chance that errors won't matter or won't be noticed. But what if our cognitive biases are busy choosing our political leaders while we scroll TikTok for the latest meme war? Psychologists have identified a lot of likely suspects. Here are just three of our favourites!

Confirmation bias - Once we have chosen our preferred party or candidate, we are much more likely to notice, believe and remember evidence that this was a good choice. This helps us to avoid cognitive dissonance but given that this choice is mostly based on who we think our parents voted for, there is a risk that this might be a mistake. After all, would you trust your parent's choice of venue, guests or playlist for an 18th birthday party? No? Hmmm ....

Negativity bias - The human brain has evolved as a highly sensitive threat detector. This has been keeping us alive for millions of years, but this is also why politicians spend so much time telling tales on each other. We are much more likely to notice (and remember) bad things so a good way to get elected is to swamp the voters with bad news about your opponent. Sound familiar?

The Dunning-Kruger effect - The less you know, the more certain you are. This suggests that voters who know nothing at all about a major decision will feel the most certain that they are correct. Combined with the confirmation bias built in to the filter bubble effect of social media (where the algorithm only gives you news which confirms what you already believe) this could explain the increasingly polarised, angry and adversarial politics we seem to see in most countries.

There are more. Do some research and learn about the underdog effect, the bandwagon effect, coverage bias, hindsight bias, availability bias, self-serving bias, the halo effect and false consensus to get a scale of the problem. All of this system 1 thinking might make us feel that none of us should be trusted to vote but perhaps a better solution is to educate children so that they understand why they should care enough to do the work and let system 2 make more of these decisions for us.

Think about this ...

Could this be a good topic for an EE? There is a lot of anxiety about how social media could be used (or abused) to influence elections by fair means or foul. To what extent is voter behaviour influenced by one or more of these biases?

HL Extension - How would you explain the link between technology and Cognition (decision making) based on these examples?