Request from Two JMU Professors for Help with a Research Project

By James Kwak 

I received the following this morning and thought it was interesting.

We are writing to ask your help in bringing some empirical measurement to the long-standing question: On matters of economic policy, do liberals understand conservatives better than conservatives understand liberals, or is the reverse true?  In response to Krugman’s claim that liberals have the edge in understanding rival views (http://fivebooks.com/interviews/paul-krugman-on-inspiration-liberal-economist), Caplan disagreed and suggested a type of ideological Turing test to measure the ability of individuals to “state opposing views as clearly and persuasively as their proponents” (http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2011/06/the_ideological.html).  Specifically, could it be determined whether one is conservative or liberal through an online question-and-answer exchange?

Although we are unable to conduct the ideal test, we have developed a multiple-choice version of this Turing-like economic policy test. At http://econturingtest.com, we have posted a ten-question economic policy test. Respondents will take the test and then anonymously report some information about themselves. With the statistical results, we hope we can shed some light on this research question.

We have received approval from our Institutional Review Board (approval No. 16-016) to offer this online survey. Now all we need is traffic to the website, and that’s why we’re appealing to you now. We are asking the top 30 economics blogs in 2012 and 2013 according to the Onalytica rankings to post a note for us. When our study is complete, we will be providing results to all who ask and seeking appropriate publication outlets.

Thanks in advance for any help you may be able to offer. If you have questions, please let us know.

Sincerely,

William Wood and Angela Smith

James Madison University-Economics

woodwc@jmu.edu

Voice: 540 568-3243

http://cob.jmu.edu/woodwc

My thoughts after taking it are after the break …

I thought some of the questions were poorly written, most often because multiple possible answers said almost the same thing. But I believe in the methodology they are using that doesn’t matter, because they are trying to see how well side A’s perception of side B’s beliefs matches side B’s actual beliefs. That said, they would have to make sure that the “conservative” and “liberal” questions are equally vague, which is probably not the case—or find some way to correct for that bias.

Also, if the study works the way I think it does, I’m not sure it addresses Krugman’s claim. Krugman’s claim was about how well one side understand’s the other’s position. By that I think he means its underlying economic logic. The study is about people’s motivations, which are something else. A given economic argument could map to more than one motivation.

So I’m not actually optimistic that this will teach us anything, but who knows.