[EL] Interesting Research on Disclosure in Non-Electoral Setting

[RuthAlice Anderson]

While this article is not looking at the effect of disclosure on the behavior of electeds or voters, I thought it might still interest Election Law readers. 

Deeply Conflicted - Boston Globe - 
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/05/15/deeply_conflicted/?page=full

A few excerpts:

But recent research by experimental psychologists is uncovering some uncomfortable truths: Disclosure doesn’t solve problems the way we think it does, and in fact it can actually backfire. Coming clean about conflicts of interest, they find, can promote less ethical behavior by advisers. And though most of us assume we’d cast a skeptical eye on advice from a doctor, stockbroker, or politician with a personal stake in our decision, disclosure about conflicts may actually lead us to make worse choices.

....

No surprise there: People with a conflict gave biased advice to benefit themselves. But the twist came when the researchers required the experts to disclose this conflict to the people they were advising. Instead of the transparency encouraging more responsible behavior in the experts, it actually caused them to inflate their numbers even more. In other words, disclosing the conflict of interest?—?far from being a solution?—?actually made advisers act in a more self-serving way.

“We call it moral licensing,” Moore says. “After having behaved honestly and virtuously, you then feel licensed to indulge in being a little bit bad.” Other recent findings on ethical behavior, he says, show that people compensate for virtuous acts with vice, and vice versa. “People behave as if they have a moral ‘set point,’?” Moore says. Indeed, it appeared that disclosing a conflict of interest gave people a green light to behave unethically, as if they were absolved from having to consider others’ interests.

....
Sunita Sah, a researcher at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, has conducted experiments focusing on doctor-patient interactions, in which a doctor prescribes a medication but discloses a financial interest in the company that makes the drug. As expected, most people said such a disclosure would decrease their trust in the advice. But in practice, oddly enough, people were actually more likely to comply with the advice when the doctor’s bias was disclosed. Sah says that people feel an increased pressure to take the advice to avoid insinuating that they distrust their doctor.



It's thought-provoking and I wonder if it plays out the same way in election law. Does disclosing financial contributions give electeds moral license to more brazenly serve the interests of donors? Does disclosure make voters resist being influenced by that disclosure?  I would love to know. 

RuthAlice

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