Writers on economics have been talking since the election about why the “fiscal cliff” metaphor is misleading. Alternative metaphors have been offered like the fiscal hill, fiscal curb, and fiscal showdown, as if one metaphor could easily be replaced by another that makes more sense of the real situation. But […] Read more »
American Voters: Plenty of Opinions, But Without a Clue
… American voters are deeply polarized but at the same time greatly overestimate their own political intellect. “We predict that asking people to explain how a policy works will make them aware of how poorly they understand the policy,” [Philip] Fernbach writes, “which will cause them to subsequently express more […] Read more »
That Guy Won? Why We Knew It All Along
… Amid the many uncertainties of next Tuesday’s presidential election lies one sure thing: Many people will feel in their gut that they knew the result all along. … Most will also have a ready-made argument for why it was inevitable that Mitt Romney, or Barack Obama, won — displaying […] Read more »
Why Are States So Red and Blue?
Regardless of who wins the presidential election, we already know now how most of the electoral map will be colored, which will be close to the way it has been colored for decades. … But why do ideology and geography cluster so predictably? Why, if you know a person’s position […] Read more »
I’m Right! (For Some Reason)
… Such attack ads work, in large part, because we don’t understand them. Statements take advantage of a fact about human psychology called the “illusion of explanatory depth,” an idea developed by the Yale psychologist Frank Keil and his students. We typically feel that we understand how complex systems work […] Read more »
Reasons Matter (When Intuitions Don’t Object)
Among the most memorable scenes in movie history is Toto’s revelation that the thundering head of the Wizard of Oz is actually animated by a small man behind a curtain, who lamely says, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.” Modern psychology has, to some extent, pulled the […] Read more »