Bias and Democracy
Bias and Democracy
This chapter surveys the many kinds of political bias. These include special interest bias, “knowledge falsification” by the majority, innate majoritarian bias, status quo bias, cultural cognition and motivated reasoning, and framing. It then shows that democracy is often able to overcome biases within the citizenry, because it takes only a majority or a relatively modest supermajority of people to change ordinary legislative policy. Thus, if many, or even most, people are imprisoned by their own worldviews, misled by politicians' frames, or remain ignorant of all new information relevant to public policy, the shift of a relatively small portion of voters can often make a decisive difference.
Keywords: political bias, democracy, special interests, knowledge falsification, innate majoritarian bias, status quo, cultural cognition
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