Interesting Stories, Voter Behavior

[From Rick Marken (960607.0830)]

Bill Powers (960606.1015 MDT) --

Or I could answer as a control theorist, and say that the fans remain
loyal because they are controlling for something other than a winning
record by their team -- for example, a sense of solidarity, or a
reputation for loyalty, or a chance to spend an afternoon out of the
office.

Bruce Gregory (960606.1325 EDT)--

If the control theory dilettante answer given above is the best PCT can do,
PCT doesn't have anything very interesting to say about Red Socks Fans.

What would you consider an "interesting" thing to say about Red Socks fans?
What if the _correct_ explanation of the behavior of a Red Socks Fan were
uninteresting? Would you prefer the interesting explanation?

I think many people are more interested in psychological "just so" stories
than in scientific understanding of human nature. Indeed, some people
believe that the more interesting the story, the better the explanation.
Such people (and I've met a few) are turned off by the "uninteresting",
"trivial" or "common sense" PCT explanations of behavior. Why abandon the
baroque fascination of Jung, Freud or even Skinner for the simplicity of PCT?
Isn't it more fun to explain "masochism" as pennance for Oedipal anger at a
father than as an irrelevant side effect (an appearance from the observer's
perspective) of controlling for a perception of solidarity with the home
team?

Is there anything we can do about this problem? Perhaps we could change the
PCT terminology so that it has more sexual innuendo: perception = excitation;
reference = desire; action = thrust?

Apparently applying PCT to understanding the appeal of spectator sports is
not nearly so fruitful.

What's unfruitful about the PCT approach to understanding spectator sports
fans? What approach seems more fruitful? What constitutes a "fruitful"
approach to understanding this phenomenon?

Ken Hacker (960606) --

Would it be possible for Bill to help someone study why a voter selects
on presidential candidate over another?

No. Sorry. PCT doesn't apply to voting behavior;-)

Seriously, though, why don't you try to come up with a PCT based research
project on voting behavior on your own first; then we can help you develop
it. Just start out by looking at voting behavior as a control process and ask
what variables a person might be controlling. One thing I control when I vote
is who I vote for; if I voted for X and noticed that my mark actually
indicated Y, I would not be perceiving what I want and I would try to fix it.

Your question implies that the reference for who one votes for is selected in
order to control a higher order perception. That seems right to me; I don't
know if I can articulate the higher order perceptions I am controlling when I
vote for a particular candidate, but I imagine one might be the perception
of "living in a prospeous and humane society"; I know that I virtually NEVER
vote for my personal financial gain; if I did, I'd be a rock ribbed
Republican. But some people might vote for personal financial gain rather
than social betterment; this could be tested using verbal versions of The
Test.

I believe that you could do a study using artificial candidates and
artificial issues; once you know which higher level perceptions a person is
controlling for, you should be able to predict which candidate the person
will vote for given the issues associated with each candidate. But it will
take some work to and (probably) lots of tuning of the procedure in order to
get to the point where you are getting clean, clear data. Of course, the whole
study would be done "one voter at a time".

Best

Rick

[From Bruce Gregory (960607.1250 EDT)]

(Rick Marken 960607.0830)]

What would you consider an "interesting" thing to say about Red Socks fans?
What if the _correct_ explanation of the behavior of a Red Socks Fan were
uninteresting? Would you prefer the interesting explanation?

I'll treat this as a serious question, rather than a reflexive rhetorical
riposte (love that alliteration). An interesting explanation is one
that makes something intelligible that previously either was not
intelligible or seemed to require no explanation. PCT explanations
are almost always interesting.

Me:

>Apparently applying PCT to understanding the appeal of spectator sports is
>not nearly so fruitful.

You:

What's unfruitful about the PCT approach to understanding spectator sports
fans? What approach seems more fruitful? What constitutes a "fruitful"
approach to understanding this phenomenon?

Fruitful = Interesting

(Ken Hacker 960606) --

>Would it be possible for Bill to help someone study why a voter selects
>on presidential candidate over another?

Rick

No. Sorry. PCT doesn't apply to voting behavior;-)

Obviously not. PCT applies to purposive behavior. Voting is not
purposive. :slight_smile:

(Rick Marken 960606.1400)

to

(Jeff Vancouver 960606.1345 EST)

I agree with you completely. This is exactly where I part company with you
and others interested in PCT. The difference between conventional IV-DV
research and the PCT version of IV-DV research called "The Test" (where the
DV is typically a hypothetical controlled variable and we look for LACK of
effect of IV on DV) may be subtle but it is essential. Even if a person
cannot formally articulate the difference between conventional and PCT
research, he or she will end up doing research a la PCT once he or she
understands behavior from a PCT perspective. No other way of doing research
would make sense.

Now _that's_ elegant.

Regards,

Bruce G.

Rick,

Thanks for the note on using PCT to study voter choices. There is a
cybernetic model of voting in my (editor)
1995 book on candidate images that I
think could be a useful launching point from the political behavior side
of voting literature. In other words, the authors call for the study of
individual adaptation in processing messages about candidates and making
decisions about those candidates in relation to personal goals.

What is somewhat confusing to me at this point is how the PCT approach
could sort out various levels of control (hierarchies) in something that
is as slippery as politics. For example, one day a person may think that
the economy is doing well and lean toward Clinton, then they may hear
about Paula Jones and invoke moral (supposedly) reactions against Clinton.
Do you think that small-sample observations and applications of the The
Test through months of the campaign would work? Thanks again,

                                                          Ken Hacker

[From Rick Marken (960608.1715)]

Kenneth L. Hacker (960608) --

There is a cybernetic model of voting in my (editor) 1995 book on

> candidate images that I think could be a useful launching point

from the political behavior side of voting literature.

Are you coming to the CSG meeting? You could bring me a copy. I'd
really like to see it.

What is somewhat confusing to me at this point is how the PCT
approach could sort out various levels of control (hierarchies) in
something that is as slippery as politics.

I don't even know how to sort out levels of control in experiments on
simple motor behavior. At least, I haven't really done it yet.

But I don't think we have to worry about levels of control yet,
anyway. I think it would be an enormous accomplishment if we could
just identify, with great certainty, one or two of the variables that
a person controls when voting. The certainty of the identification
would be shown by our ability to predict exactly how the person
will respond to every disturbance of the controlled variable,
including disturbances never tried before.

For example, one day a person may think that the economy is doing
well and lean toward Clinton, then they may hear about Paula Jones
and invoke moral (supposedly) reactions against Clinton.

This doesn't sound like a hierarchy problem to me. It sounds like a
person responding to disturbances to two different variables; one
variable is the perception of the president's handling of the economy;
the other is the perception of the president's sexual morality. Paula
Jones might be a distubance to one but not the other.

Of course, I am making up variables that a voter MIGHT be controlling
for; the research I'm thinking of (vaguely) would be aimed at
determining, as best as possible, what variables a voter is ACTUALLY
controlling for. I think the experiment could be done using verbal
statements as the disturbances.

Do you think that small-sample observations and applications of the
The Test through months of the campaign would work?

If it won't work then there is no way to study purposeful behavior;-)
Increasing the sample size and averaging over individuals would just
make the results completely meaningless -- with respect to our
understanding of individual voters, that is.

Since we would have to be tuning and trying new things with this
research for a while (several months, I bet), I doubt that we would
have things ready to go so that we could track voter control in the
time remaining in the current election. But I have no doubt that the
work we do now will make it possible, in the future, for us to track
some of the variables controlled by individual voters over the course
of a campaign.

Can you guess at some perceptions a voter MIGHT be controlling for?
Can you think of ways to test these guesses?

Best

Rick