The experiment’s results basically reveal that when money is on the line, the bullshit factor decreases dramatically: people were far more likely to provide the correct factual answer when they stood to gain a monetary reward.
In previous threads, I’ve offered bets as to various propositions, and always been amused at the number of refusals – why, I wondered, would you pass up a chance to make some money if you’re so sure of your prediction?
This research suggests that at least some of the refusals were motivated by the same factor: as long as their confident declarations cost them nothing, they could be sustained.
To my recollection, mostly you offer these bets to left-leaning posters. Hence, we can fairly assume that these refusals are largely a result of your clear and unbiased analysis running up against liberal hypocrisy. I’m sure I speak for many of us when I commend your efforts despite such stubborn refusal to admit error.
Well, maybe not “many”…some, surely. Several. One, at least, we can be sure of.
True, but the underlying principle is the same: asserting a prediction you don’t genuinely believe will happen – but comports with your politics – when it costs you nothing is different than asserting the same prediction when being wrong will hurt your purse.
I endorse your sentiments, but there’s another related factor in the experiment. Kevin Drum: But I think there’s an alternate possibility: partisans are likely to answer a bit more accurately when they’re forced to actually think about their answers. The cash reward is just a way of demonstrating that the pollster is serious about wanting accurate answers. But does this mean that partisans really do know the truth, and are therefore better than we think at holding incumbents accountable? I wouldn’t make that leap. Using Cash Rewards to Make Partisans Less Partisan – Mother Jones
My problem with message board wagers involves a reluctance to work out proper intermediaries. I did participate at Intrade back when it was legal, and happily exploited conservative naivete. IRL I sometimes offer bets for nominal sums for the purpose of focusing minds. But it’s polite to tolerate shifts in position: that’s part of the exercise after all. Money, even nominal sums, deflates false certainty.
You see the cost isn’t really pecuniary. The cost involves mostly pride. And if somebody wants to avoid ever being wrong in a public manner, they should avoid all bets of this sort: after all, it’s only a matter of time before they experience an unfavorable throw of the dice.
It honestly seems like a different principle–you’re essentially asserting optimism (without being willing to lay money) and blinders (but being willing to take them off for money) are the same thing.
That is an interesting point, but keep in mind that people say all sorts of rediculous things on this board, and every comment is kept forever. All it takes is a quick search, and within seconds one can be shown to have been wrong in predictions.
However, I can think of many, many times where people saying dumb things would refuse to back up those things with a wager. I think there’s something especially humiliating about having to recognize one’s faults, rather than merely have them memorialized on the Internet. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if people, on some level, would simply be ashamed to have to pay a bet - not because of the pecuniary loss, but because it represents an admission of error.
And contrary to the others who think this is just a Bricker gotcha-ya! thread, I clearly recall offers of bets to those who thought he 2012 polls were skewed as well as offers to those who have been predicting an imminent invasion or Iran for the last seven years.
I imagine they’d find the same thing with conspiracy theorists. If you ask a truther what happened on 9/11 with cash on the line, I think they’d be more likely to suddenly give the official story. But would that mean they really believe it? Or would they just be saying what they thought the questioner wanted to hear?
Or rather, if a truther told me I’d get $100 for correctly answering questions about 9/11, I’d tell him or was a controlled demolition in a heartbeat.
Don’t pick on the conspiracy theorists: this effect is ubiquitous. Put another way, my fondness for arranging friendly wagers is highly eccentric; it’s something I’m more likely to keep under wraps IRL, or at least exert effort on conciliatory framing.
We’re jumped-up chimpanzees with overgrown frontal cortexes. Sure, the rational part of us thinks it can deliberate between competing ideas, but our monkey brains panic at the prospect, nay humiliation, of being proven wrong. Proven wrong, not being wrong in itself. The latter can be papered over. Ironically, a reputation for fair mindedness can be an asset, but that fact doesn’t typically quell our inner screaming id.
A fine topic for a Great Debates thread, very apropos.
The old categories are lies, damned lies, and statistics. The new one is a biased selection of the truth.
A partisan can present a true message that’s biased by simply deciding what portion of the truth he presents. He simply talks about the best things his candidate has done while ignoring everything he did wrong and the worst things his opponent has done while ignoring everything he did right.
People who aren’t fellow believers can see this. They can see that facts which are true are being used to form a false overall picture.
Sure, but there are as many if not more times that people refuse to back up non-dumb assertions with a wager, too. I’ve never bet on political issues here because they are inherently subjective. By contrast, I make bets for both pride and stuff all the time in The Game Room - a few months ago I sent someone a bottle of scotch because Peyton Manning wasn’t the Colts’ starting quarterback in 2012.
Sometimes the more right you are, the harder it is to make a wager. You think a stranger on a message board who is a birther is going to admit defeat and send you a check? No, you’re going to spend the next three years arguing loony evidence until you take the only way out by putting a gun in your mouth.
I think the conclusion is probably true to some extent, but I don’t see at all how this experiment proves it.
The problem is that a lot of people who believe incorrect things are not unaware that the mainstream view contradicts them. They just disagree, and think the conventional wisdom is wrong and the media is misreporting the facts etc. But they know that whoever is scoring their results most likely adheres to the conventional wisdom. So if there’s nothing on the line, they say what they truly believe. If there’s money in getting a “correct” answer, they provide answers that they believe will be scored correct, even if they personally don’t believe it actually is correct.
In a sense, this may be splitting the sentence I quoted from your post. When there’s money on the line people are more likely to give a correct answer, but this represents an increase rather than a decrease in the “bullshit factor”, since these people are - in their own minds - providing bullshit answers in order to get a higher score.
Of course, this is not the only factor in play, but I think it seriously skews tests of this sort.
