A massive experiment on choice blindness in political decisions : confidence, confabulation, and unconscious detection of self-deception

We implemented a Choice Blindness Paradigm containing political statements in Argentina to reveal the existence of categorical ranges of introspective reports, identified by confidence and agreement levels, separating easy from very hard to manipulate decisions. CBP was implemented in both live and web-based forms. Importantly, and contrary to what was observed in Sweden, we did not observe changes in voting intentions. Also, confidence levels in the manipulated replies where significantly lower than in non-manipulated cases even in undetected manipulations. We name this phenomenon unconscious detection of selfdeception. Results also show that females are more difficult to manipulate than men.Fil: Rieznik, Andrés. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Escuela de Negocios, Laboratorio de Neurociencia, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina. El Gato y La Caja, Buenos Aires, Argentina.Fil: Moscovich, Lorena. Universidad de San Andrés, Buenos Aires, ArgentinaFil: Frieiro, Alan. Universidad de Vigo, Vigo, EspañaFil: Figini, Julieta. Universidad de San Andrés, Buenos Aires, ArgentinaFil: Catalano, Rodrigo. El Gato y La Caja, Buenos Aires, ArgentinaFil: Garrido, Juan Manuel. El Gato y La Caja, Buenos Aires, ArgentinaFil: Álvarez Heduan, Facundo. El Gato y La Caja, Buenos Aires, ArgentinaFil: Sigman, Mariano. CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, Escuela de Negocios, Laboratorio de Neurociencia, Buenos Aires, ArgentinaFil: González, Pablo A. El Gato y La Caja, Buenos Aires, Argentin

Ilusiones introspectivas : ceguera a la elección en Argentina

Fil: Figini, Julieta. Universidad de San Andrés. Departamento de Ciencias Sociales; Argentina.Rieznik, Andrés Aníba

A massive experiment on choice blindness in political decisions: Confidence, confabulation, and unconscious detection of self-deception

We implemented a Choice Blindness Paradigm containing political statements in Argentina to reveal the existence of categorical ranges of introspective reports, identified by confidence and agreement levels, separating easy from very hard to manipulate decisions. CBP was implemented in both live and web-based forms. Importantly, and contrary to what was observed in Sweden, we did not observe changes in voting intentions. Also, confidence levels in the manipulated replies where significantly lower than in non-manipulated cases even in undetected manipulations. We name this phenomenon unconscious detection of selfdeception. Results also show that females are more difficult to manipulate than men.Fil: Rieznik, Andrés Anibal. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; Argentina. El Gato y La Caja; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Moscovich, Lorena Giselle. Universidad de San Andrés; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Frieiro, Alan. Universidad de Vigo; EspañaFil: Figini, Julieta. Universidad de San Andrés; ArgentinaFil: Catalano, Rodrigo. El Gato y La Caja; ArgentinaFil: Conde Garrido, Juan Manuel. El Gato y La Caja; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Alvarez Heduan, Facundo. El Gato y La Caja; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Sigman, Mariano. Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: González, Pablo Adrián. El Gato y La Caja; Argentin

(left) Correction rates for the four questions separated by voting intentions.

<p>In the control group, none of the questions were M. In the treatment group, questions two and four were manipulated. (right) Correction rates to the four questions separated by gender.</p

(left) Age distribution and (right) geographical location of the participants.

<p>(left) Age distribution and (right) geographical location of the participants.</p

Detection rates for each statement for incumbent and opposition voters.

<p>The questions for which we found a significant difference between incumbent and opposition voters (p<0.01 according to a chi-squared test) are 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11 and 12. See the translated version of these questions in supplementary material <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0171108#pone.0171108.s001" target="_blank">S1 File</a>.</p

parameters of the multiple linear regression for detection rates (from 0 to 1), including only the regressors shown to have significant predictive power.

<p>Estimate intercept (.58) is the detection rate for 0 confidence, 0 agreement level, females and opposition voters.</p

(left) detection rates as a function of the confidence level in M replies.

<p>Detection rates change by 80% according the confidence level, using intervals of 10 (R^2 = 0.9). Error bars indicate confidence intervals. (rigth) Detection rates change by more than 40% according to the agreement level. Error bars, indicating confidence intervals, are smaller than the data points size.</p

Data collected in Experiment 2.

<p>Data collected in Experiment 2.</p