In this episode we're joined by a leading political scientist to help us figure out the complex psychological and social factors that motivate us to vote… or not to. We discuss how and why our decision whether or not to vote might not be a rational one. And why it is important to understand that. And why it’s important to vote!Hearing Hanson and Donald Green discuss how rational choice theory fails to explain why so many people do vote reminds me of an exercise I do with my students that makes the point that a significant number of scientific disciplines use the comparative method and/or modeling to test hypotheses instead of the experimental method. I ask them to name scientific disciplines and then raise fingers on my right hand if those disciplines primarily use the experimental method and fingers on my left hand. Almost every time I lead that exercise, someone mentions a field of knowledge that I don't consider science, usually astrology, which the students confuse with astronomy. Hey, they're only off by a few centuries; the two were connected to each other, if not the same discipline, until the Renaissance through Enlightenment.*
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Occasionally, a student will mention economics. My response is that economics has the potential to be science, but I think its subject matter, money, motivates rich and powerful people to try to influence the ideas being examined, the methods, and the results in ways that hinder the field actually being or even becoming a science. This relates to the second and third objections to economics being a science Investopedia lists in Is Economics a Science?
Economics is generally regarded as a social science, although some critics of the field argue that it falls short of the definition of a science for a number of reasons, including a lack of testable hypotheses, lack of consensus, and inherent political overtones.I think economics has testable hypotheses that economists examine through the comparative method and especially modeling, although I think the models and assumptions behind them have issues. One of those assumptions is the rational choice theory, which fails to explain voter turnout. I should probably add that to the reasons I tell my students why I don't consider economics to not yet be a science. As it is, I already tell them that anyone performing experiments in economics is really doing psychology, which I do consider to be a science.* Notice that psychology provided a satisfactory answer to why people vote when economics couldn't.
That's a wrap for today's subject, the science of elections. Stay tuned for two or three posts about Emmy Award winners, another topic that will be good to share next month.
*Those would be good subjects for their own posts, but not today.
