This long dormant thread gets resuscitated in the light of an analysis of the Brit population who voted in the historic referendum on leaving the European Union. The Online Privacy Foundation funded and published the analysis, and here’s the meat of the summary of “The Role of Personality, Authoritarianism and Cognition in the United Kingdom’s 2016 Referendum on European Union Membership“:
The UK electorate’s views of EU membership appear to be strongly influenced according to people’s personality traits, dispositions and thinking styles. Participants expressing an intent to vote to leave the EU reported significantly higher levels of authoritarianism and conscientiousness, and lower levels of openness and neuroticism than voters expressing an intent to vote to remain in the EU. When compared with Remain voters, Leave voters displayed significantly lower levels of numeracy and appeared more reliant on impulsive System 1 thinking. In the experimental studies, voters on both sides were found to be susceptible to the cognitive biases tested, but often, unexpectedly, to different degrees.
Gaining a deeper understanding of the differences and similarities between Leave and Remain voters is an important area of study, not only to better understand UK society, but also to contribute to research exploring the effectiveness of psychographic targeting. In light of allegations of psychographic targeting during the referendum, it is important to understand whether, and to what extent, knowledge of voters’ core psychological characteristics and biases could be exploited, particularly through social media, to influence the way they form early opinions and subsequently process information.
The findings from this research raise important questions regarding the use and framing of numerical and non-numerical data during UK political campaigns. In a situation where “In general, political campaign material in the UK is not regulated, and it is a matter for voters to decide on the basis of such material whether they consider it accurate or not” (The Electoral Commission, 2018) the research also raises the question of whether existing regulatory controls need to be amended. Not only do many voters lack the skills to critically evaluate the information which is being presented, their inherent beliefs and biases clearly influence the way in which they process this information. Considering these factors, a fundamental question is raised as to whether direct democracy in the form of binary, winner-takes-all, referendums is an appropriate mechanism for deciding major and complicated political issues, such as constitutional changes. More broadly, constitutions may need to be adapted to take into account fundamental shifts in societies’ use of technology and consumption of information.
Which all ignores the fact that we, and everyone else who uses representative democracy, elect representatives not only to represent us, but to become experts in the subject matter of government so that us plebes, who often haven’t the time to master the ugly details, don’t have to – and so we’re not subject to the uninformed opinions of our unwashed brethren.
I do wonder how numeracy correlates with general analytical skills, though. Here’s the paper’s comment:
When compared to Leave voters, Remain voters had higher levels of numerical risk literacy, were more likely to engage in analytical System 2 thinking, and tended to perform better in deductive reasoning tasks. In all three areas, older voters tended to perform significantly worse than young voters intending to vote the same way.
Numeracy
Figure 6. Differences in Berlin Numeracy Test results for Leave and Remain voters by age group and sex. Error bars represent 95% confidence interval of the mean.
Cognitive Reflection
Figure 7. Differences in Cognitive Reflection Test results for Leave and Remain voters by age group and sex. Error bars represent 95% confidence interval of the mean. Points below the dashed red line denote a greater tendency for impulsive System 1 thinking, while points above the red line denote a greater tendency for reflective System 2 thinking.
Reasoning
Figure 8. Differences in Wason card selection task scores (abstract reasoning cards) for Leave and Remain voters by age and sex. Error bars represent 95% confidence interval of the mean.
Some may argue that direct democracy is important because it expresses the will of the people, but I don’t buy it. Go form a party and get elected, says I. It’ll subject those candidates to close examination, whether they like it or not, and so long as the major media players remain honest and vigilant, the populace stands a chance of evaluating those candidates on their policy views and their general competency.
Deborah MacKenzie of NewScientist (14 July 2018, paywall) remarks:
Around a third of people in Western societies have an authoritarian personality. This personality type is partly determined by genes, and features a strong desire for order, obedience, conformity and cohesion within the “in-group” with which the person identifies.
While personality traits are generally thought to stay roughly stable over a person’s life, some of them can be made to shift. “Threatening circumstances can make less authoritarian people significantly more authoritarian,” says Jost.
The real message of the analysis by Sumner and his colleagues is that politicians of all stripes need to find messages to attract voters across a range of personality types, says Tillman. “The Leave campaign and the Republicans have done a better job of appealing to authoritarian voters. The challenge for rival parties is to understand why and respond to it.”
Which I rather sadly notes completely ignores the possibility of improving the population from being knee-jerk, emotion-driven people to being more analytical and thoughtful.
