On how social science research can be used to frame policies to make them more appealing:
David Hardisty, a student of Weber’s, led an experiment in which a 2 percent fee added to an airline ticket was described to various subjects as either a carbon “tax” or a carbon “offset.” The subjects were told the fee would finance alternative-energy and carbon-reduction technologies. Hardisty predicted he would get different results from Democrats and Republicans, and that was indeed the case. Democrats were willing to pay a fee for an offset or a tax; Republicans were willing to pay for an offset but not a tax.
… Weber and her husband, Eric Johnson, a professor at Columbia’s business school theorize that we “query” ourselves, mustering evidence pro and con from memory as we clear a path to a decision. The order of the thoughts matters — early thoughts seem to sway our opinion, biasing subsequent thoughts to support the early position… In a follow-up study by Hardisty, merely asking people to list their thoughts about the fee in one order or another (pros first or cons first) affected their preference, regardless of whether they were Democrats or Republicans.
Reblogged from the pandas are moshing.
April 25, 2009, 9:10pm
