Making Sense from (Apparent) Senselessness: The JCR Lens

Abstract

What explains the emergence of nativist and populist movements across the globe? From the election of Donald Trump to the vote for Brexit, pundits wonder how and why these unforeseen outcomes came to pass. Why were people so surprised about these outcomes? Why do people sometimes vote against their self-interest? And why do people fall prey to fake news and believe seemingly outrageous claims? In this, our last editorial, we claim that some answers to these questions can be found in the pages of this journal-in articles published in JCR 1. While JCR welcomes and publishes many different types of papers, it has traditionally focused on theory building, and our goal in this article is to show how rich and robust theoretical work-uncovering the "why" behind effects-can help us explain and understand events. In our view, such understanding remains a key goal of science, even though immediate practical application of many JCR papers may not seem obvious.We will address the first two questions relying on the literatures on optimism, motivated reasoning and forgetting, survey and prediction pool biases, the affective bases for decisions, and the potential for social performance and media influence. Then we turn to a critical question that looms large and could provoke undesired consequences: how do people determine whether a claim is true? WHY WERE PEOPLE SO SURPRISED ABOUT THE OUTCOMES OF THESE ELECTIONS?In the days leading up to the 2016 Brexit and US presidential elections, many people actively tracked and attended to political polls and models. On November 8, 2016-Election Day in the United States-"The Upshot" column writers in the New York Times predicted that Hillary Clinton had an 85% chance of winning the presidency. On June 23, 2016, the day of the UK Brexit referendum, betting markets predicted an 88% chance that "remain" would win. After the outcomes of those elections were revealed, many expressed shock and wondered why the opinion polls were so wrong. While most polls did indicate a greater probability of Clinton beating Trump and "remain" beating "exit," polls also measure variation, and these polls indicated enough variation that the alternative outcomes should not have been so surprising. For example, on Election Day in the United States, the legendary Nate Silver's poll-analysis blog FiveThirtyEight predicted a 71% chance for the Democrats to win the presidency. Thus, Silver also predicted a non-negligible, nearly 30% chance that Trump would win. In the United Kingdom, during the month leading up to the Brexit vote, nearly the same number of surveys gave "exit" the edge as gave "remain" the edge (17 of 35 surveys conducted in June 2016 indicated "exit" had the edge), suggesting either outcome had a realistic possibility of occurring.So why were people so surprised about these outcomes? Research published in this journal (and elsewhere) has shown that people are unrealistically optimistic about themselves (Tanner and Carlson 2009) and that they engage in motivated reasoning (Jain and Maheswaran 2000). I...

Consumer Behavior Research: Theoretical and Methodological Paradigms Trending

“…Changes in the political environment will require research that understands populist movements. Initial studies have used pieces of literature on optimism, motivated reasoning and forgetting, survey and prediction pool biases, the effective bases for decisions, and the potential for social performance and media influence to provide some explanations (Dahl, Fischer, Johar & Morwitz, 2017).…”

Impact of fake news on social image perceptions and consumers’ behavioral intentions

“…A vast amount of fake and misleading information is regularly created to provoke people to question products' quality or authenticity (Christopher, 2018). However, under the influence of social desirability bias, people tend to avoid sharing or discussing content that may harm their self-presentation (Dahl et al, 2017). For example, Amul has built a powerful brand-image in India and enjoys a massive fan following.…”

The influence of political candidate brands during the 2012 and 2016 US presidential elections

“…This, of course, differs for voters based on numerous factors such as one's level of political activity, consumption of media coverage, level of identification with a political party, opinions on certain ideological issues and exposure to candidate messaging EJM 53,12 (Dahl et al, 2017). The more an individual is influenced by any of these factors, the more extreme the positions one takes (Baldassarri and Gelman, 2008).…”

“…At the same time, political marketers must manage their candidate's image to overcome an opponent (Garzia, 2013). The recent US presidential elections seem to serve as a reminder of how the power of a political candidate brand image (Guzmán and Sierra, 2009) and the media attention it gets (Dahl et al, 2017) can influence voter perception, intention and choice.…”

“…In doing so, it attempts to address a vital gap (Van Steenburg, 2015) in the marketing, political science and communications literature on the voter-as-consumer paradigm. Finally, it attempts to contribute to the important task that consumer researchers have in explaining why events unfold as they do (Dahl et al, 2017).…”