When Can Politicians Scare Citizens Into Supporting Bad Policies? A Theory of Incentives with Fear-Based Content

Lupia, Arthur and Menning, Jesse (2005): When Can Politicians Scare Citizens Into Supporting Bad Policies? A Theory of Incentives with Fear-Based Content.

Abstract

Analysts make competing claims about when and how politicians can use fear to gain support for suboptimal policies. Using a model, we clarify how common attributes of fear affect politicians’ abilities to achieve self-serving outcomes that are bad for voters. In it, a politician provides information about a threat. His statement need not be true. How citizens respond differs from most game-theoretic models – we proceed from more dynamic (and realistic) assumptions about how citizens think. Our conclusions counter popular claims about how easily politicians use fear to manipulate citizens, yield different policy advice than does recent scholarship on counterterrorism, and highlight issues (abstract, distant) and leaders (secretive) for which recent findings by political psychologists and public opinion scholars will – and will not – generalize.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: emotions; behavioral economics; game theory; political science; incentives
• Subjects: H - Public Economics > H3 - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents > H30 - General; C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C7 - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory > C72 - Noncooperative Games; D - Microeconomics > D8 - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty > D83 - Search ; Learning ; Information and Knowledge ; Communication ; Belief ; Unawareness

References

Banks, Jeffrey S. 1990. Signaling Games in Political Science. Chur: Harwood Academic Press. Bianco, William T. 1998. “Different Paths to the Same Result: Rational Choice, Political Psychology, and Impression Formation in Campaigns.” American Journal of Political Science 42(4): 1061-1081. Bouton, Mark E., and Robert C. Bolles. 1979. “Contextual Control of the Extinction of Conditioned Fear.” Learning and Motivation, 10, 445- 466. Brader, Ted. 2006. Campaigning for Hearts and Minds: How Political Ads Use Emotion to Sway the Electorate. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bueno de Mesquita, Ethan. 2006. “Politics and the Suboptimal Provision of Counterterror.” Forthcoming, International Organization. Bush, George W. 2005. Quote reported in http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9904968. Cacioppo, John, and Wendi L. Gardner. 1999. “Emotion.” Annual Review of Psychology 40: 191-214. Cain, Christopher K, Ashley Blouin and Mark Barad. 2003. “Temporally Massed CS Presentations Generate More Fear Extinction Than Spaced Presentations.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 29:323-333. Crawford, Vincent, and Joel Sobel. 1982. “Strategic Information Transmission.” Econometrica 50:1431-51 Damasio, Antonio R. 1994. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Putnam. Davis, Michael and Karyn Myers. 2002. “The role of Glutamate and Gamma-aminobutyric Acid in Fear Extinction: Clinical Implications for Exposure Therapy.” Biological Psychiatry 52: 998-1007. Delli Carpini, Michael X., and Scott Keeter. 1996. What Americans Know About Politics and Why It Matters. New Haven: Yale University Press. Elster, Jon, 2000. “Rational Choice History: A Case of Excessive Ambition.” American Political Science Review 94: 685-695. Fiske, Susan T., and Steven L. Neuberg. 1990. “A Continuum of Impression Formation, From Category-Based to Individuating Processes: Influences of Information and Motivation on Attention and Interpretation.” In Mark P. Zanna (ed.) Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 23. San Diego: Academic Press. Gigerenzer, Gerd, Peter M. Todd, and the ABC Research Group. 1999. Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart. New York: Oxford University Press. Gore, Al. 2004. “Keynote Address.” The New School Conference on "Fear: Its Political Uses and Abuses." February 5. www.newschool.edu/admin/pres/spring04/algorespeech.html Huddy, Leonie, Stanley Feldman, Charles Taber, and Gallya Lahav. 2005. “Threat, Anxiety, and Support of Counterterrorism Policies.” American Journal of Political Science 49: 593-608. Kalyvas, Stathis. 2004. “The Paradox of Terrorism in Civil War.” The Journal of Ethics 8: 97–138, 2004. Kandel, Eric R., James H. Schwartz, and Thomas M. Jessell. 1995. Essentials of Neural Science and Behavior. Norwalk, CT: Appleton & Lange. Leahey, Thomas H. & Harris, Richard J. 2001. Learning and Cognition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Le Doux, Joseph. 1996. The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life. New York: Simon & Shuster. Lupia, Arthur, and Mathew D. McCubbins. 1998. The Democratic Dilemma: Can Citizens Learn What They Need to Know. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lupia, Arthur, Mathew D. McCubbins, and Samuel L. Popkin. 2000. “Beyond Rationality: Reason and the Study of Politics.” In Arthur Lupia, Mathew D. McCubbins, and Samuel L. Popkin (eds.) Elements of Reason: Cognition, Choice, and the Bounds of Rationality. New York: Cambridge University Press. Marcus, George, W. Russell Neuman, and Michael MacKuen. 2000. Affective Intelligence and Political Judgment. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McDermott, Rose. 2004. “The Feeling of Rationality: The Meaning of Neuroscientific Advances for Political Science.” Perspectives on Politics 2: 691-706. McDermott, Rose. 2006. “Cognitive Neuroscience and Politics: Next Steps.” Forthcoming in Ann Crigler, Michael MacKuen, George Marcus, and W. Russell Neuman (eds.) The Affect Effect: Dynamics of Emotion in Political Thinking and Behavior. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McNollGast. 1987. “Administrative Procedures as Instruments of Political Control.” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization 3: 243-277. Mencken, H.L. 1920. In Defense of Women. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Mutz, Diana C. and Byron Reeves. 2005. “The New Videomalaise: Effects of Televised Incivility on Political Trust. American Political Science Review 99: 1-15. Phelps, Elizabeth A. 2006. “Emotion and Cognition: Insights from Studies of the Human Amygdala.” Annual Review of Psychology 57: 27-53. Sloman, Steven A. 1996. “The Empirical Case for Two Systems of Reasoning.” Psychological Bulletin 119: 3–22. Skouras, F., A. Hadjidimos, A. Kaloutsis and G. Papadimitriou. 1947. I psichopathologia tis pinas, tou fovou kai tou agxous: nevroseis kai psichonevroseis [The Psychopathology of Hunger, Fear, and Anxiety: Neuroses and Psychoneuroses] (Athens), pp. 124–136 -- as reported in Kalyvas 2004. Spence, A. Michael. 1974. Market Signaling. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. VandeHei, Jim, and Howard Kurtz. 2004. “The Politics of Fear: Kerry Adopting Bush Strategy of Stressing Dangers.” Washington Post. September 29. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58117-2004Sep28.html?sub=AR White, Lynn T. 1989. Policies of Chaos: The Organizational Causes of Violence in China’s Cultural Revolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Witte, Kim. 1992. “Putting the Fear Back Into Fear Appeals: The Extended Parallel Process Model.” Communication Monographs 59: 329-349.