Discussion paper

DP9098 The Dark Side of the Vote: Biased Voters, Social Information, and Information Aggregation Through Majority Voting

We experimentally investigate information aggregation through majority voting when some voters are biased. In such situations, majority voting can have a ?dark side?, i.e. result in groups making choices inferior to those made by individuals acting alone. We develop a model to predict how two types of social information shape efficiency in the presence of biased voters and we test these predictions using a novel experimental design. In line with predictions, we find that information on the popularity of policy choices is beneficial when a minority of voters is biased, but harmful when a majority is biased. In theory, information on the success of policy choices elsewhere de-biases voters and alleviates the inefficiency. In the experiment, providing social information on success is ineffective. While voters with higher cognitive abilities are more likely to be de-biased by such information, most voters do not seem to interpret such information rationally.

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Citation

Tyran, J, R Morton and M Piovesan (2012), ‘DP9098 The Dark Side of the Vote: Biased Voters, Social Information, and Information Aggregation Through Majority Voting‘, CEPR Discussion Paper No. 9098. CEPR Press, Paris & London. https://cepr.org/publications/dp9098