Altruism theory of voting

Last updated December 29, 2023

The altruism theory of voting is a model of voter behavior which states that if citizens in a democracy have "social" preferences for the welfare of others, the extremely low probability of a single vote determining an election will be outweighed by the large cumulative benefits society will receive from the voter's preferred policy being enacted, such that it is rational for an “altruistic” citizen, who receives utility from helping others, to vote.^[1] Altruistic voting has been compared to purchasing a lottery ticket, in which the probability of winning is extremely low but the payoff is large enough that the expected benefit outweighs the cost.^[2]

Since the failure of standard rational choice models—which assume voters have "selfish" preferences—to explain voter turnout in large elections, public choice economists and social scientists have increasingly turned to altruism as a way to explain why rational individuals would choose to vote despite its apparent lack of individual benefit, explaining the paradox of voting. The theory suggests that individual voters do, in fact, derive personal utility from influencing the outcome of elections in favor of the candidate that they believe will implement policies for the greater good of the entire population.^[3]

The rational calculus of voting

The "selfish" rationale for voting

The standard model of voter calculus was articulated by Riker and Ordeshook in their 1968 article "A Theory of the Calculus of Voting" in The American Political Science Review .^[4] The basic utility hypothesis for the calculus of voting they gave was:

R = (BP) − C

Where B is the expected differential utility a voter personally receives from his preferred candidate winning; P is the probability of the voter bringing about B (that is, turning the election for his preferred candidate); C is the individual's cost of voting in the election; and R is the individual's expected reward from voting. If R > 0, then the expected utility of voting outweighs its costs, and it is reasonable to vote. But if R ≤ 0, the costs outweigh the benefits and a strictly rational individual would not be expected to vote.

Because P, the probability of any one vote determining the outcome, is extremely small for any large election, the expected benefits of voting under the traditional rational choice model is always roughly equal to zero. This leads to the so-called paradox of voting, in which rational choice models of voter behavior predict tiny turnouts which simply do not occur. In all democracies, voter turnout exceeds what the basic rational choice models predict.

Expressive versus instrumental voting

Because simple selfishness cannot explain why large numbers of people consistently choose to vote, Riker and Ordeshook introduced another term to the equation, D, to symbolize the personal or social benefits conferred by the act of voting itself, rather than by affecting the outcome of the election.

R = (BP) − C + D

This drew a distinction between expressive voting , intended only to signal support or demonstrate civic responsibility, and instrumental voting, intended to actually change the outcome. The benefits here did not come from actually influencing the election, but rather from the social payoffs of participating in it. Because the term BP was assumed to be zero, D was presumed to be the only important factor in determining elections.^[5]

The "altruistic" rationale for voting

Because of the multitude of different and contradictory definitions of expressive voting,^[5] recently another effort by political scientists and public choice theorists has been made to explain voting behavior with reference to instrumental benefits received from influencing the outcome of the election. If voters assumed to be rational but also to have altruistic tendencies and some preference for outcomes enhancing the social welfare of others, they will reliably vote in favor of the policies they perceive to be for the common good, rather than for their individual benefit.

In his paper "Altruism and Turnout," James H. Fowler explained how the altruistic theory modified the calculus of voting:

Scholars incorporate altruism into the traditional calculus of voting model by assuming that a citizen also cares about the benefits that others secure from the preferred outcome (Edlin, Gelman, and Kaplan 2006; Jankowski 2002, 2004). Under this assumption, B is a function not only of direct benefits to oneself BS, but to the N other people affected by the outcome of the election who would gain an average benefit BO if the citizen’s preferred alternative won. It also depends on how much the citizen cares about benefits to others, which is labeled a for altruism.

These assumptions transform the calculus of voting to P(BS + aNBO) > C.

...There is by now a substantial literature in economics, sociology, biology, psychology, and political science yielding evidence that human beings are also motivated by the welfare of others (Fehr and Fischbacher 2003; Monroe 1998; Piliavin and Charng 1990). Specifically, people frequently engage in acts of altruism by choosing to bear costs in order to provide benefits to others.^[3]

Essentially, voters behave altruistically by absorbing the cost of voting in order to provide society with the benefits of their preferred policy, although the expected reward of voting under this model is greater than zero (and thus still a rational decision) because of voters' altruistic social preferences. Edlin, et al., found in their study of altruistic behavior among voters,

... [F]or an individual with both selfish and social preferences, the social preferences will dominate and make it rational for a typical person to vote even in large elections;(2) to show that rational socially-motivated voting has a feedback mechanism that stabilizes turnout at reasonable levels (e.g., 50% of the electorate)...

Their findings suggest that in a large election, altruistic preferences will trump selfish tendencies, thus encouraging a stable voter turnout that closely mirrors the observed rate in western democracies.

Voter's altruistic preferences

In his 2007 book The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies , George Mason University economist Bryan Caplan argued that, all else equal, voters do not, in fact, choose policies based on self-interest. The rich are not more likely to support policies that personally benefit them, like lower marginal rates, and the poor are not more likely to oppose welfare reform.^[6]

He claims that what he calls the "Self-Interest Voter Hypothesis" (SIVH), the theory that individuals' policy preferences are narrowly selfish, is empirically wrong. In response to U.S. Republican candidate Mitt Romney's remarks about the "47%" of Americans who will "always" vote Democrat because they are dependent on the welfare state, Caplan writes,

Wrong, wrong, wrong. The 47% won't vote for Obama "no matter what." Almost half of voters who earn less than the median income vote Republican in the typical election. A person doesn't support the nanny state because he wants government to take care of him; a person supports the nanny state because he wants government to take care of us.^[7]

Caplan says that voters consistently demonstrate preferences that are not clearly related to self-interest, and they are motivated primarily by what they believe is best for the country.

Rational irrationality

Related to the public choice concept of rational ignorance, Caplan proposes the concept of "rational irrationality" as an explanation for why the average voter holds views that are persistently and systematically contradictory to the consensus view of expert economists. His thesis is that indulging innate cognitive biases (of which he identifies four as being major contributors to bad economic policy positions) is psychologically gratifying, while overcoming natural prejudices through training, education, and skepticism, is psychologically costly. Therefore, when the personal benefit giving in to our biases is greater than the personal cost suffered from acting on them, individuals will tend to rationally indulge in irrational behavior, like voting for protectionist tariffs and other economically damaging but socially popular policies.

These views tend not to be related to the particular voter in any rationally self-interested way, and so voters are genuinely not being subject to any direct economic penalties for choosing irrational policies. The altruistic voter will indulge, without restraint, in make-work bias, anti-foreign bias, pessimistic bias, and anti-market bias,^[6] all in the hopes of better his fellow man through the ballot box.

Criticisms and modifications

A 2008 study of voters in Sweden during the 1990s found significant evidence for self-interested "pocketbook" voting. The authors found that voters can and will respond to direct promises of personal economic benefits, although it appears that citizens respond almost entirely to the prospective promises of politicians but not to the actual implementation of those policies.^[8]
George Mason Law Professor Tun-Jen Chiang criticized the Edlin altruist model as overly simplistic and ultimately naive about voter preferences. Chiang presents an alternative model of altruist voting behavior, centered around voters' selective altruism towards favored racial, cultural, religious, regional, sexual, economic, or social groups (of which they may or may not be a member). He contends that, even if two candidates policies had identical social welfare benefits overall,

It is rational to vote as long as the candidates differ in their effect on the welfare of subsets of the population, and one happens to be particularly concerned with an affected subset. For example, if a candidate proposed to take wealth from the richer half of the population and distribute it to the poorer half, and the redistribution created no overall effects, a voter under the broad altruism model would have no incentive to vote. However, if a voter cared particularly for the welfare of the poor, that voter would have an incentive to vote for the candidate; similarly, a voter that cared particular for the welfare of the rich would have an incentive to vote against the candidate. The result in my model is that both such voters would be rationally motivated to vote.^[9]

Related Research Articles

Altruism is the principle and practice of concern for the well-being and/or happiness of other humans or animals above oneself. While objects of altruistic concern vary, it is an important moral value in many cultures and religions. It may be considered a synonym of selflessness, the opposite of selfishness.

Rational choice theory refers to a set of guidelines that help understand economic and social behaviour. The theory originated in the eighteenth century and can be traced back to political economist and philosopher, Adam Smith. The theory postulates that an individual will perform a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether an option is right for them. It also suggests that an individual's self-driven rational actions will help better the overall economy. Rational choice theory looks at three concepts: rational actors, self interest and the invisible hand.

The Condorcet paradox in social choice theory is a situation noted by the Marquis de Condorcet in the late 18th century, in which collective preferences can be cyclic, even if the preferences of individual voters are not cyclic. This is paradoxical, because it means that majority wishes can be in conflict with each other: Suppose majorities prefer, for example, candidate A over B, B over C, and yet C over A. When this occurs, it is because the conflicting majorities are each made up of different groups of individuals.

Public choice, or public choice theory, is "the use of economic tools to deal with traditional problems of political science". Its content includes the study of political behavior. In political science, it is the subset of positive political theory that studies self-interested agents and their interactions, which can be represented in a number of ways – using standard constrained utility maximization, game theory, or decision theory. It is the origin and intellectual foundation of contemporary work in political economy.

Rational ignorance is refraining from acquiring knowledge when the supposed cost of educating oneself on an issue exceeds the expected potential benefit that the knowledge would provide.

In political science, voter turnout is the participation rate of a given election. This is typically either the percentage of registered voters, eligible voters, or all voting-age people. According to Stanford University political scientists Adam Bonica and Michael McFaul, there is a consensus among political scientists that "democracies perform better when more people vote."

Selfishness is being concerned excessively or exclusively for oneself or one's own advantage, pleasure, or welfare, regardless of others.

Calculus of voting refers to any mathematical model which predicts voting behaviour by an electorate, including such features as participation rate. A calculus of voting represents a hypothesized decision-making process.

Peter Carl Ordeshook is an American political scientist. He is the Mary Stillman Harkness Professor of Political Science at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.

The paradox of voting, also called Downs' paradox, is that for a rational, self-interested voter, the costs of voting will normally exceed the expected benefits. Because the chance of exercising the pivotal vote is minuscule compared to any realistic estimate of the private individual benefits of the different possible outcomes, the expected benefits of voting are less than the costs.

<i>The Myth of the Rational Voter</i> 2007 book by Bryan Caplan

The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies is a 2007 book by the economist Bryan Caplan, in which the author challenges the idea that voters are reasonable people whom society can trust to make laws. Rather, Caplan contends that voters are irrational in the political sphere and have systematically biased ideas concerning economics.

Political forecasting aims at forecasting the outcomes of political events. Political events can be a number of events such as diplomatic decisions, actions by political leaders and other areas relating to politicians and political institutions. The area of political forecasting concerning elections is highly popular, especially amongst mass market audiences. Political forecasting methodology makes frequent use of mathematics, statistics and data science. Political forecasting as it pertains to elections is related to psephology.

The concept known as rational irrationality was popularized by economist Bryan Caplan in 2001 to reconcile the widespread existence of irrational behavior with the assumption of rationality made by mainstream economics and game theory. The theory, along with its implications for democracy, was expanded upon by Caplan in his book The Myth of the Rational Voter.

Warm-glow giving is an economic theory describing the emotional reward of giving to others. According to the original warm-glow model developed by James Andreoni, people experience a sense of joy and satisfaction for "doing their part" to help others. This satisfaction - or "warm glow" - represents the selfish pleasure derived from "doing good", regardless of the actual impact of one's generosity. Within the warm-glow framework, people may be "impurely altruistic", meaning they simultaneously maintain both altruistic and egoistic (selfish) motivations for giving. This may be partially due to the fact that "warm glow" sometimes gives people credit for the contributions they make, such as a plaque with their name or a system where they can make donations publicly so other people know the "good" they are doing for the community.

Social preferences describe the human tendency to not only care about one's own material payoff, but also the reference group's payoff or/and the intention that leads to the payoff. Social preferences are studied extensively in behavioral and experimental economics and social psychology. Types of social preferences include altruism, fairness, reciprocity, and inequity aversion. The field of economics originally assumed that humans were rational economic actors, and as it became apparent that this was not the case, the field began to change. The research of social preferences in economics started with lab experiments in 1980, where experimental economists found subjects' behavior deviated systematically from self-interest behavior in economic games such as ultimatum game and dictator game. These experimental findings then inspired various new economic models to characterize agent's altruism, fairness and reciprocity concern between 1990 and 2010. More recently, there are growing amounts of field experiments that study the shaping of social preference and its applications throughout society.

Voting behavior refers to how people decide how to vote. This decision is shaped by a complex interplay between an individual voter's attitudes as well as social factors. Voter attitudes include characteristics such as ideological predisposition, party identity, degree of satisfaction with the existing government, public policy leanings, and feelings about a candidate's personality traits. Social factors include race, religion and degree of religiosity, social and economic class, educational level, regional characteristics, and gender. The degree to which a person identifies with a political party influences voting behavior, as does social identity. Voter decision-making is not a purely rational endeavor but rather is profoundly influenced by personal and social biases and deeply held beliefs as well as characteristics such as personality, memory, emotions, and other psychological factors. Voting advice applications and avoidance of wasted votes through strategic voting can impact voting behavior.

Behavioral game theory seeks to examine how people's strategic decision-making behavior is shaped by social preferences, social utility and other psychological factors. Behavioral game theory analyzes interactive strategic decisions and behavior using the methods of game theory, experimental economics, and experimental psychology. Experiments include testing deviations from typical simplifications of economic theory such as the independence axiom and neglect of altruism, fairness, and framing effects. As a research program, the subject is a development of the last three decades.

Reciprocal altruism in humans refers to an individual behavior that gives benefit conditionally upon receiving a returned benefit, which draws on the economic concept – ″gains in trade″. Human reciprocal altruism would include the following behaviors : helping patients, the wounded, and the others when they are in crisis; sharing food, implement, knowledge.

Quadratic voting is a collective decision-making procedure which involves individuals allocating votes to express the degree of their preferences, rather than just the direction of their preferences. By doing so, quadratic voting seeks to address issues of the Condorcet paradox and majority rule. Quadratic voting works by allowing users to "pay" for additional votes on a given matter to express their support for given issues more strongly, resulting in voting outcomes that are aligned with the highest willingness to pay outcome, rather than just the outcome preferred by the majority regardless of the intensity of individual preferences. The payment for votes may be through either artificial or real currencies. Quadratic voting is a variant of cumulative voting. It differs from cumulative voting by altering "the cost" and "the vote" relation from linear to quadratic.

In social choice theory, the spatial model of voting is used to simulate the behavior of voters in an election, either to explain voter behavior, or to estimate the likelihood of desirable or undesirable outcomes under different voting systems.

References

↑ Edlin, Aaron, Andrew Gelman, and Noah Kaplan. "Voting as a Rational Choice: Why and How People Vote To Improve the Well-Being of Others." Rationality and Society. 19.3 (2008): 293–314. Web. 22 Oct. 2012.
↑ Jankowski, Richard. "Buying a Lottery Ticket to Help the Poor: Altruism, Civic Duty, and Self-interest in the Decision to Vote." Rationality and Society 14.1 (2002): 55–77. Sage Journals. Web. 20 Oct. 2012.
1 2 Fowler, James H. "Altruism and Turnout." The Journal of Politics 68.3 (2006): 673–83. JSTOR. Web. 20 Oct. 2012.
↑ Riker, William H., and Peter Ordeshook. "A Theory of the Calculus of Voting." The American Political Science Review 62.1 (1968): 25–42. JSTOR. Web. 20 Nov. 2012.
1 2 Hamlin, Alan, and Colin Jennings. "Expressive Political Behaviour: Foundations, Scope and Implications." British Journal of Political Science. 41.3 (2011): 645–670. Web. 22 Oct. 2012.
1 2 Bryan Caplan. The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, Princeton University Press, 2007. Print.
↑ Caplan, Bryan. "Will False Belief in the SIVH Destroy Romney's Candidacy?" EconLog. Library of Economics and Liberty, 18 Sept. 2012. Web. 20 Oct. 2012.
↑ Elinder, Mikael, Henrik Jordahl, and Panu Poutvaara. "Selfish and Prospective: Theory and Evidence of Pocketbook Voting." Institute for the Study of Labor Discussion Paper Series. 3763 (2008): n. page. Web. 22 Oct. 2012.
↑ Chiang, Tun-Jen. "Unequal Altruism and the Voting Paradox." George Mason University Law and Economics Research Paper Series. 12–36 (2012): n. page. Web. 22 Oct. 2012.

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[Edlin-1] Edlin, Aaron, Andrew Gelman, and Noah Kaplan. "Voting as a Rational Choice: Why and How People Vote To Improve the Well-Being of Others." Rationality and Society. 19.3 (2008): 293–314. Web. 22 Oct. 2012.

[2] Jankowski, Richard. "Buying a Lottery Ticket to Help the Poor: Altruism, Civic Duty, and Self-interest in the Decision to Vote." Rationality and Society 14.1 (2002): 55–77. Sage Journals. Web. 20 Oct. 2012.

[Fowler-3] 1 2 Fowler, James H. "Altruism and Turnout." The Journal of Politics 68.3 (2006): 673–83. JSTOR. Web. 20 Oct. 2012.

[4] Riker, William H., and Peter Ordeshook. "A Theory of the Calculus of Voting." The American Political Science Review 62.1 (1968): 25–42. JSTOR. Web. 20 Nov. 2012.

[Hamlin-5] 1 2 Hamlin, Alan, and Colin Jennings. "Expressive Political Behaviour: Foundations, Scope and Implications." British Journal of Political Science. 41.3 (2011): 645–670. Web. 22 Oct. 2012.

[Caplan-6] 1 2 Bryan Caplan. The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies, Princeton University Press, 2007. Print.

[EconLog-7] Caplan, Bryan. "Will False Belief in the SIVH Destroy Romney's Candidacy?" EconLog. Library of Economics and Liberty, 18 Sept. 2012. Web. 20 Oct. 2012.

[8] Elinder, Mikael, Henrik Jordahl, and Panu Poutvaara. "Selfish and Prospective: Theory and Evidence of Pocketbook Voting." Institute for the Study of Labor Discussion Paper Series. 3763 (2008): n. page. Web. 22 Oct. 2012.

[9] Chiang, Tun-Jen. "Unequal Altruism and the Voting Paradox." George Mason University Law and Economics Research Paper Series. 12–36 (2012): n. page. Web. 22 Oct. 2012.

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