Cheryl Boudreau

Closing the Gap: When Do Cues Eliminate Differences between Sophisticated and Unsophisticated Citizens?

Relatively few scholars assess the conditions under which cues improve citizens’ decisions. I analyze experimentally the conditions under which one cue (the statements of an endorser) enables both sophisticated and unsophisticated citizens to improve their decisions. My results demonstrate that the effectiveness of this cue depends upon the endorsers incentives and citizens’ levels of sophistication. Specifically, I find that under idealized conditions (i.e., when the endorser always has an incentive to make truthful statements), this cue dramatically improves the decisions of (and closes the gap between) sophisticated and unsophisticated subjects. When the endorsers incentives are more realistic (i.e., the endorser may have an incentive to lie), this cue affects sophisticated versus unsophisticated subjects differently: sophisticated subjects do not improve their decisions, whereas unsophisticated subjects typically improve their decisions enough to make them comparable to sophisticated subjects. Thus, even under more realistic conditions, the gap between sophisticated and unsophisticated subjects closes.

The Blind Leading the Blind: Who Gets Polling Information and Does it Improve Decisions?

We analyze whether and when polls help citizens to improve their decisions. Specifically, we use experiments to investigate 1) whether and when citizens are willing to obtain polls and 2) whether and when polls help citizens to make better choices than they would have made on their own. We find that citizens are more likely to obtain polls when the decisions they must make are difficult and when they are unsophisticated. Ironically, when the decisions are difficult, the pollees are also uninformed and, therefore, do not provide useful information. We also find that when polls indicate the welfare-improving choice, citizens are able to improve their decisions. However, when polls indicate a choice that will make citizens worse off, citizens make worse decisions than they would have made on their own. These results hold regardless of whether the majority in favor of one option over the other is small or large.

Lost in Space? Information Shortcuts, Spatial Voting, and Local Government Representation

Voters face difficult choices in local elections, where information about candidates is scarce and party labels often do not distinguish candidates’ ideological positions. Can voters choose candidates who represent them ideologically in these contexts? To address this question, we conduct original surveys that ask candidates in the 2011 mayoral election in San Francisco to take positions on local policy issues. We ask voters their positions on these same policy issues on a written exit poll. We use these policy positions to construct comparable measures of candidate and voter ideology (i.e., ideal points). Within the exit poll, we experimentally manipulate cues to examine their effects on voters’ candidate preferences. We observe a strong, positive relationship between voter ideology and the ideology of the candidates they choose in the election. However, our experiments show that endorsements from political parties and newspapers with ideological reputations weaken this relationship. These findings challenge the view of local elections as nonideological and demonstrate that spatial voting theory can be usefully applied to local settings. They also indicate that voters may not treat political party and newspaper endorsements as signals of candidates’ ideological positions, but rather as nonideological signals of partisan affinity or candidate quality/viability.

Gresham's Law of Political Communication: How Citizens Respond to Conflicting Information

Although citizens are often exposed to conflicting communications from political elites, few studies examine the effects of conflicting information on the quality of citizens’ decisions. Thus, I conduct experiments in which subjects are exposed to conflicting information before making decisions that affect their future welfare. The results suggest that a version of Gresham’s Law operates in the context of political communication. When a credible source of information suggests the welfare-improving choice and a less credible source simultaneously suggests a choice that will make subjects worse off, subjects make worse decisions than when only the credible source is available. This occurs because subjects base their decisions upon the less credible source or forego participation. This occurs mostly among unsophisticated subjects, who are more easily led astray. These findings reveal important limits to the effectiveness of credible information sources and suggest how political campaigns might strategically use conflicting information to their benefit.

Making Talk Cheap (and Problems Easy): How Legal and Political Institutions Can Facilitate Consensus

In many legal, political, and social settings, people must reach a consensus before particular outcomes can be achieved and failing to reach a consensus may be costly. In this article, we present a theory and conduct experiments that take into account the costs associated with communicating, as well as the difficulty of the decisions that groups make. We find that when there is even a small cost (relative to the potential benefit) associated with sending information to others and/or listening, groups are much less likely to reach a consensus, primarily because they are less willing to communicate with one another. We also find that difficult problems significantly reduce group members’ willingness to communicate with one another and, therefore, hinder their ability to reach a consensus.

Wanting What Is Fair: How Party Cues and Information About Income Inequality Affect Public Support for Taxes

Income inequality has risen dramatically in the United States, with potentially negative social, economic, and political consequences. Governments can use redistributive tax policies to combat inequality, but doing so requires public support. When will voters support redistributive tax policies? We address this question by conducting survey experiments where citizens express opinions about tax policies in a real-world context. We manipulate whether they receive party cues, information about rising income inequality, both, or neither type of information. We find that when citizens are given information about income inequality, they connect it to their views on redistributive tax policies. We also find that inequality information can induce Republicans to support a tax increase that their party opposes. These results challenge the prominent view of citizens as too ignorant to connect information about inequality to specific taxes. They also suggest that efforts to inform the electorate about inequality can influence tax policy opinions.

Read but Not Heard? Engaging Junior Scholars in Efforts to Make Political Science Relevant

P olitical science as a discipline must overcome many obstacles to demonstrate the broader relevance of its research to the public. One major obstacle is the fact that our discipline’s professional norms (including those that guide personnel decisions in academic departments) provide few rewards and often impose costs for pursuing activities that will help us to more effectively communicate our findings. These norms are particularly problematic for engaging junior scholars in efforts to make political science more relevant. Although many junior scholars are pursuing innovative research with significant real-world implications, they often lack the incentive (or have a strong disincentive) to pursue the types of outreach activities recommended by this task force. Indeed, it is not uncommon for junior scholars to believe that they should be read but not heard. As a motivating example of the challenges we face in engaging junior scholars, consider Assistant Professor X’s experience. Assistant Professor X conducted a study of a recent election that has important theoretical implications for political science as well as valuable real-world implications for political practitioners. After Assistant Professor X discusses the study’s results with a senior colleague, the senior colleague invites Assistant Professor X to present those results at a seminar that other members of the department, political practitioners, and members of the media will attend. When accepting the invitation, Assistant Professor X asks whether a traditional academic talk is appropriate or whether the presentation should be geared to a policy-focused lay audience. The senior colleague replies that the type of talk is Assistant Professor X’s choice. Now there is a dilemma: Assistant Professor X can give a traditional academic talk, which will impress colleagues but potentially alienate political practitioners and members of the media, or Assistant Professor X can give a more descriptive policy-focused talk, which will be of great interest to political practitioners. However, Assistant Professor X fears that colleagues may not perceive such a talk to be sufficiently rigorous or scientific. Therefore, it does not take long for Assistant Professor X to choose the traditional academic talk, which is a hit with colleagues but, predictably, is lost on other members of the audience, who leave midway through the presentation. As this example illustrates, the goals of advancing in our profession (particularly, getting tenure) and demonstrating the public value of our research are often at odds. The conflict between these two goals is a major obstacle to engaging junior scholars in the outreach activities the task force proposes. In this article, I suggest how our discipline might reduce this conflict and more effectively engage junior scholars. I begin by arguing that engaging junior scholars is a goal worth pursuing. I next describe the challenges that our discipline must overcome if we are to engage them effectively. I then discuss potential solutions to the weak incentives (and strong disincentives) for junior scholars to participate in outreach activities. These solutions may encourage junior scholars to communicate their findings more broadly and help our discipline make better use of a largely untapped resource in its outreach efforts.

Lost in Space? Shortcuts and Spatial Voting in Low-Information Elections

Voters face difficult choices in low-information local elections. Despite the concerns this raises for voter competence, there are virtually no studies of whether and when voters are able to choose candidates who best represent them ideologically in these contexts. We fill this gap by creating same-scale measures of candidate and voter ideology during a local election and examining how candidate ideology affects voters’ decisions. We also conduct an exit poll in which we experimentally manipulate cues and examine their effects on voters’ candidate preferences. Our results show that the ideological proximity of candidates has large effects on voters’ decisions. However, exposing voters to endorsements made by political parties and newspapers with ideological reputations diminishes, rather than enhances, voters’ propensity to prefer ideologically-similar candidates. These results challenge the notion that local elections are non-ideological and that citizens who have access to cues make “better” decisions than those who do not.

Reporting Balance Tables, Response Rates and Manipulation Checks in Experimental Research: A Reply from the Committee that Prepared the Reporting Guidelines

We welcome the comments on our committee’s Reporting Guidelines (2014, Journal of Experimental Political Science 7 1(1): 81–98) from Diana Mutz and Robin Pemantle, as well as the opportunity to clarify our recommendations. We appreciate the points they raise and share their goal of encouraging a better understanding of experimental methods. Nonetheless, we are not in complete agreement with their proposed revisions to our recommendations.

Greater than the Sum of Their Parts? When Combinations of Institutions Improve Citizens’ Decisions

Many scholars show that institutions help citizens with their political decisions. However, real-world contexts contain multiple institutions that are imposed together. Thus, I develop a theory and experimental test of the conditions under which combinations of two institutions induce citizens to trust a speaker’s statements and make better decisions than when only one institution is present. The theoretical model demonstrates that a second institution typically should not alter a speaker’s propensity to make truthful statements, nor subjects’ decisions to trust those statements. The experimental results reveal important departures from such rational behavior. Specifically, a second institution makes subjects more willing to trust the already mostly truthful statements they receive, which enables them to make better decisions than when only one institution is imposed upon the speaker. These findings suggest lessons about the conditions under which institutions can increase trust and improve decision making in political, legal, and economic contexts.