An Expressive Voting Model of Anger, Hate, Harm and Shame

Estefanía Campos  | 13 de junio de 2018  | Vistas: 51

Professor of economics and honorary doctorate of UFM, Dwight R. Lee says:

What you’re really doing when you’re voting is feeling good about yourself, expressing yourself in a way that you feel is moral and noble.”

In this lecture he gives a background of the topic of expressive voting and later describes the work that’s been done about it about good intentions and argues that people don’t have a sense of responsibility for their vote. He analyzes the latest elections in the United States and the hate it produced to Donald Trump on one side and the establishment on the other. Also talks about Trump's offers to kill the wife and children of terrorists and deportation of illegal people to their country.

Lee developed a voter model of “anger, hate, harm and shame” that considers a policy that inflict harm on a group of men, women and children that is so serious that most people will, after emotions have cooled, recognize it as evil. He explains the model and how it would affect the voting results due to more consciousness of the responsibility of voting.

Later quotes Steven Pinker’s work on how anger, hate and our voting decisions are influenced by our tribal impulses; he believes the world has to much morality and says:

The human moral sense can excuse any atrocity in the minds of those who commit it [and vote for it] and it furnishes them with motives for violence that bring them no tangible benefits.”

Finally gives some real examples of elections, referendums and policies that prove that people vote according to their emotions and led by the promises of the candidates or authorities.

Watch more from Dwight R. Lee:

• The Moral Appeal of Government Action
• Dwight R Lee: Incentives, Public Choice and the Role of Government
• Honorary Doctoral Degree Awarded at May 2018 Commencement to Dwight R. Lee