Can Accurate Knowledge Reduce Wishful Thinking in Voters' Predictions of Election Outcomes?
- 1 May 1995
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Taylor & Francis in The Journal of Psychology
- Vol. 129 (3) , 285-300
- https://doi.org/10.1080/00223980.1995.9914966
Abstract
About 3,000 Israeli voters were asked to predict the outcomes of the 1992 general election and to state their political preference. Political science students were found to possess more accurate knowledge than education students about some outcomes of the previous (1988) election, but the predictions made by both groups varied as a function of their preferences, indicating a wishful thinking effect. Wishful thinking effects of the same magnitude were found for groups differing in the accuracy of their knowledge about the outcomes of the previous election and for respondents who had been provided with partial or full base-rate information about the outcomes of the previous election. Thus, accurate knowledge did not reduce the effects of wishful preferences on predictions. Respondents' predictions differed from the results of public opinion polls published at the same time in the Israeli printed media. The results were more compatible with a motivational than with a purely cognitive interpretation.Keywords
This publication has 9 references indexed in Scilit:
- Wish and Reality in Voters' Predictions of Election OutcomesPolitical Psychology, 1993
- Factors Influencing Wishful Thinking and Predictions of Election OutcomesBasic and Applied Social Psychology, 1992
- Wishful Thinking—Against All OddsJournal of Applied Social Psychology, 1991
- On Affect and Cognition in PoliticsSocial Psychology Quarterly, 1989
- Optimism about Elections: Dissonance Reduction at the Ballot BoxPolitical Psychology, 1988
- Picking the Winners: Politician vs. Voter Predictions of Two Controversial Ballot MeasuresPublic Opinion Quarterly, 1986
- Preference, Expectations, and Placement Judgments: Some Evidence from SwedenSocial Psychology Quarterly, 1983
- When prophecy bends: The preference–expectation link in U.S. presidential elections, 1952–1980.Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1983
- Post-decision dissonance at the polling booth.Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science / Revue canadienne des sciences du comportement, 1976