# The Political Bias Test **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 1, 2017, 9:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-political-bias-test/792560 "2017-08-01T09:51:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2017, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-political-bias-test/792560/61 "2017-08-06T23:31:07Z")
> [@amarinth](#): > > Here’s the problem with the test as written. Imagine a question where my gut tells me “big.” If presented with the options 10%, 50%, and 75%, my bias will point me to 75% because that’s big- especially as compared to the other options. > But when the choices are 96%, 97%, and 98% - all of those are big. They’re all right in the same range; they round to the same place. They all fit comfortably in my definition of “big” so my bias toward the correct answer doesn’t dictate which one of them is the most likely - my understanding of how tests are written does. Like I said, you should not spend too much time thinking about the answers. The problem with the test is that they give you an unlimited amount of time to think about the answers. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2017, 12:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-political-bias-test/792560/62 "2017-08-07T00:28:55Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > The problem with picking the middle answer is that sometimes, things are true. > > Choosing a point midway between the correct answer and a wrong answer makes you… drumroll please… wrong. Reality doesn’t award points for even-handedness. Obvious, but irrelevant. My point isn’t that picking the middle answer tends to be correct; my point is that that’s the direction of my bias. In no way do I think that moderation is the correct approach in normal life, when I could instead actually research the correct answer. It’s only how I handle things in cases where I’m not able to conduct research. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2017, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-political-bias-test/792560/63 "2017-08-07T00:39:05Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > Obvious, but irrelevant. My point isn’t that picking the middle answer tends to be correct; my point is that that’s the direction of my bias. In no way do I think that moderation is the correct approach in normal life, when I could instead actually research the correct answer. It’s only how I handle things in cases where I’m not able to conduct research. And my point is that pretending complete ignorance of the past behavior of the various groups isn’t honest. If someone is a known liar about certain things, pretending that any new thing they say on those topics has an even chance of being true is lying to yourself. More to the point, bias isn’t necessarily bad. Unchangeable bias is bad, and bias is bad if you want to sell a lot of newspapers or ad time to as many people as possible. ---
**Author:** ![amarinth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3be4f8/32.png) [@amarinth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/amarinth)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2017, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-political-bias-test/792560/64 "2017-08-07T02:16:43Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Like I said, you should not spend too much time thinking about the answers. The problem with the test is that they give you an unlimited amount of time to think about the answers. For me, there is no amount of time that small. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2017, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-political-bias-test/792560/65 "2017-08-07T03:08:36Z")
> [@amarinth](#): > > Here’s the problem with the test as written. Imagine a question where my gut tells me “big.” If presented with the options 10%, 50%, and 75%, my bias will point me to 75% because that’s big- especially as compared to the other options. > But when the choices are 96%, 97%, and 98% - all of those are big. They’re all right in the same range; they round to the same place. They all fit comfortably in my definition of “big” so my bias toward the correct answer doesn’t dictate which one of them is the most likely - my understanding of how tests are written does. This. A fair test for bias might be something like this: “How many illegal immigrants enter the United States every year? 500, 300,000, or 4 million?” Supposing that “300,000” is the correct answer, someone who said “500” or “4 million” would probably be showing some bias. Instead, the test was the equivalent of asking whether 300,000, 312,000, or 324,000 illegal immigrants entered the US every year. Both the leftest liberal in the world, and rightiest conservative in the world, could both answer that question incorrectly in good faith. ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2017, 3:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-political-bias-test/792560/66 "2017-08-07T03:23:26Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > And my point is that pretending complete ignorance of the past behavior of the various groups isn’t honest. > > If someone is a known liar about certain things, pretending that any new thing they say on those topics has an even chance of being true is lying to yourself. What are you even talking about? What various groups? We’re talking about the bias test here, and my comments on my strategy for it don’t apply to other situations like anti-vaxxers. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2017, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-political-bias-test/792560/67 "2017-08-07T15:29:58Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > But if you think about it, asking you question that you knew the answer to wouldn’t be able to suss out bias. The idea is to purposely ask questions you don’t know the answer and have to guess. This makes sense, so far as it goes. But if the questions are about stuff that neither liberals nor conservatives are likely to have strong opinions about, how’s it going to detect bias? Like Will Rogers said, “It isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.” The ideal question to detect bias would be one where there was a factual answer, but both liberals and conservatives would ‘know’ opposing answers that ain’t so. Obviously such questions would be hard to come by, but questions with wrong answers that feed into the biases of one side or the other shouldn’t be hard to come by, and you’d just need to make sure you had equal numbers of questions testing right-wing bias v. factual, and testing left-wing bias v. factual. > [@](#): > > But I think a lot of us were guessing in such a way that we were trying to anticipate the trick, often guessing against what our politically leanings might be. The only ‘trick’ I was trying to think through was, could I make any sense out of these questions with trivially different answers that weren’t remotely hot-button left-v-right sorts of questions. > [@John\_Mace](#): > > To add to that… the higher your correct score is, the more error there is in measuring your bias. If you got all the questions correct because you knew all the answers, there would be no way to measure your bias. If you answered all the questions correctly (and you weren’t looking them up in another window while taking the quiz), you were Encyclopedia Fucking Brown. If the quiz had been better designed, the more correct answers you had, the smaller your bias would be. You might still be biased if you got all the answers right, but it would be in areas that the quiz didn’t cover. But a well-designed quiz would hit most of the hot-button issues, so most people wouldn’t have much partisan bias in areas outside the scope of the quiz. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-political-bias-test/792560.md?page=3)