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Tedav comments on The Rationality Wars - Less Wrong
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For instance, one supplemental explanation for the False Consensus Effect (because just because it is one effect doesn't mean it has only one cause) that I have heard is that in most cases it is a "free" way of obtaining comfort.
If presented with an opportunity to believe that other people are like you, with no penalty for being wrong, one could expect people will err on the side of predicting behavior consistent with one's own behavior.
I obviously haven't done this experiment, but I suspect that if the subjects asked to wear the sign were offered a cash incentive based on their accuracy of prediction for others, both groups would make a more accurate prediction.
[See also - political predictions are more accurate when the masses are asked to make monetary bets on the winner of the election, rather than simply indicate who they would vote for]
Voting isn't a form of predicting the winner, it's not about being on the side of the winner.
I didn't mean to imply I thought it was, though I see how that wasn't clear.
I didn't intend that last bracketed part to be an example, but rather a related phenomenon - it is interesting to me how asking a random sample of people who they voted for is a worse predictor than asking a random sample of people who they would predict got the most votes, and that this accuracy further improves when people are asked to stake money on their predictions.
I simply was pointing out that certain biases might be significantly more visible when there is no real incentive to be right.
people who they voted for < who they predicted would win < bet on who would win, where '<' indicates predictive accuracy.
Because, the first is signaling about yourself and perhaps trying to sway others, the second is probably just swaying others, and the third is trying to make money.
It's a testament to a demented culture that people are lying about how they vote.
This is exactly what I was saying.
Yes, I meant it as a paraphrase.
More common than lying about how they vote is falsely believing that they voted other than they did.
Possibly. But if you're prepared to bet that the bias would vanish in that context, that's a bet I'd take.
I'm not prepared to make that bet.
I don't suspect the bias would vanish, but rather be diminished.