The Role of Payoff Valence on Voting: Egalitarian for Gains and Selfish for Losses.

We study how payoff valence affects voting behavior on the distribution of monetary outcomes framed as gains or losses in a group when using standard plurality voting (PV) procedures and when using approval voting (AV). The latter method allows the subjects to approve of as many alternatives as they wish and has been shown to eliminate the incentives to vote strategically. For both methods, we observe that voters express higher support for egalitarian allocations (and lower support for selfish options) when sharing gains than when sharing losses. Moreover, the average number of approved alternatives per ballot is higher when distributions are framed in terms of gains than when they are framed in terms of losses. We also discuss under which circumstances the shift in voting behavior is more likely to produce changes in the electoral outcome. The results suggest that framing manipulations (payoff valence) can significantly impact voting behavior.

Cognitive Reflection, Decision Biases, and Response Times.

We present novel evidence on response times and personality traits in standard questions from the decision-making literature where responses are relatively slow (medians around half a minute or above). To this end, we measured response times in a number of incentivized, framed items (decisions from description) including the Cognitive Reflection Test, two additional questions following the same logic, and a number of classic questions used to study decision biases in probability judgments (base-rate neglect, the conjunction fallacy, and the ratio bias). All questions create a conflict between an intuitive process and more deliberative thinking. For each item, we then created a non-conflict version by either making the intuitive impulse correct (resulting in an alignment question), shutting it down (creating a neutral question), or making it dominant (creating a heuristic question). For CRT questions, the differences in response times are as predicted by dual-process theories, with alignment and heuristic variants leading to faster responses and neutral questions to slower responses than the original, conflict questions. For decision biases (where responses are slower), evidence is mixed. To explore the possible influence of personality factors on both choices and response times, we used standard personality scales including the Rational-Experiential Inventory and the Big Five, and used them as controls in regression analysis.