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

[Paul Lehto]

On 5/16/11, RuthAlice Anderson <ruthalice.anderson at comcast.net> wrote:
> 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.

A disclosing physician makes many people feel "oh, he's an honest
doctor" and may thereby increase patient trust.  The research cited
below suggests that the physician-as-expert may exploit this
additional trust, creating a paradoxical increase in total bias.  This
opportunity is available because medicine always remains an expert
field that patients can not understand very well at all, and
essentially all non-physician patients are forced to trust their
doctors in the end, and can only mitigate their inability to avoid
trusting physicians' expertise through self-education.

In contrast, campaign contribution disclosures, if they are material,
don't act to increase trust that can then be exploited to a greater
degree.  They might if a false claim is made (or believed) that "full
disclosure" has somehow been made.  I don't think majorities of voters
believe that we have or have had anything close to full disclosure,
despite FEC filings.  There have always been awareness of rotating
issues like "soft money" and so forth so that voters have seen
loopholes and generally not believed they are being given full
disclosure justifying increased trust - as was the case in the
research involving physicians.

The exploitation of trust in the elections system can and does occur
in non-campaign finance areas.  It is sometimes claimed, without
qualification, that voting systems are "transparent" (which implies
full disclosure).  If believed, this trust can be exploited further.

Also, the veritable mantra of election officials is the maintenance of
"trust and confidence" in elections systems - prior to any realistic
and comprehensive examination of their suitability and transparency
(Such trust is only appropriate when a proper election system is in
place and it is further verified after investigation that it in fact
worked properly throughout the election process in question.)

When California Secretary of State Debra Bowen launched a series of
investigations into computerized voting in the so-called "top down"
review, there were widespread howls of protest from local election
officials that she was "undermining confidence" in voting systems by
transparently studying them.  The kind of confidence these election
officials were anxious to maintain is joined with the illusion of
transparency and creates the kind of helpless trust that is analogous
to patients dealing with physicians on their expert terrain and being
forced into a helpless trust.

The real message of the study is that increasing trust of experts (via
disclosure, in this case) paradoxically increases the bias or
unethical behavior of the experts.  The same is true with election
officials utilizing expert-based computer voting systems very few
really understand.  In that context, band-aid disclosures may act to
increase both trust as well as unethical behavior.

To illustrate, a couple months ago the circuit court judge and seven
others (mostly election officials) in Clay County Kentucky were
sentenced to a total of over 150 years in prison for a massive (and
successful) decade long conspiracy to rig computerized elections by
changing voters' votes, and also by buying votes. See
http://www.kentucky.com/2011/03/11/1665117/former-clay-circuit-judge-sentenced.html
   Their scheme specifically exploited voters' trust of election
officials' knowledge of how the machines worked.

Paul Lehto, J.D.

> 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
>
>


-- 
Paul R Lehto, J.D.
P.O. Box 1
Ishpeming, MI  49849
lehto.paul at gmail.com
906-204-4026 (cell)