Politicians Lie to Win
https://theconversation.com/why-we-still-fall-for-influencers-salesmen-and-politicians-who-lie-173542
Just like monopoly and car dealerships, understanding how to attract people’s attention is a competition. In this article, the author describes an experiment of a social influence model in order to understand how attention is attracted. Through a game played by three people, the author demonstrates that the optimal strategy to gain people’s attention is to stand out. There is one client and two advisers and the client has to hire one of the advisers. The study found that advisors distorting the truth and exaggerating led to retaining the clients 80% of the time. On the flip side, if you already have a connection with the client, staying close to the truth is the best way to go. There are many strategies that the advisors can go in order to persuade the clients such as advising against the evidence just to stand out. An example of trying to attract people’s attention through standing out is the Brexit campaign. Boris Johnson vouched for the leave campaign which was a strategic choice because he differentiated himself from the other competitors.
The author goes on to explain three hallmarks of social influence competition which are information symmetry, delegation of future decisions and intractable uncertainty. Information symmetry occurs when the advisers know more information than the clients do. For example, when the politicians know more information than the voters. Delegation of power occurs when clients let the advisers make the decisions on their behalf. Intractable uncertainty occurs when there is uncertainty in predicting future events and many advisers would not be able to remember their dishonest predictions.
This article relates to what we are learning in class because this article reminded me of how politics is related to game theory. The interaction of one adviser will have an impact on another adviser which will ultimately affect the outcome from the client. The tradeoff of one adviser having a connection to the client can significantly impact the relationship that the other adviser has with the client. In this case, game theory can be related to the game of politics as an extension of the prison break example. However, in this case, if one politician exaggerates the truth or differentiates themself in a drastic way, one particular politician may gain higher points whereas if a politician stated the truth, the competitive advantage isn’t as high. An honest adviser is less effective in persuading a client than a dishonest adviser. I thought this was surprising to learn at first because we typically place a trust in our politicians to help lead our country to a safer and more prosperous nation. However, if they aren’t telling the truth, how can we evaluate what they say and to a certain extent, how can we hold them accountable for what they say? After thinking about how attention is attracted from humans, I do agree that one has to stand out in order to gain more views or likes. However, in the game of politics, telling the truth isn’t always the most compelling way to create a relationship with the voters.