Logo image
Back
Wishful thinking in the 2020 U.S. presidential election: Does perspective taking mitigate the preference–expectation link?
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Wishful thinking in the 2020 U.S. presidential election: Does perspective taking mitigate the preference–expectation link?

Andrew Smith, Paul Windschitl and Jackson Crawley
Judgment and decision making, Vol.21, e4
2026
DOI: 10.1017/jdm.2026.10029
url
https://doi.org/10.1017/jdm.2026.10029View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

People’s expectations about the outcomes of elections often match their preferences, suggesting that people engage in wishful thinking. This often-documented link between people’s preferences and expectations is particularly pervasive and difficult to debias. One recent exception was a study by Rose and Aspiras (2020, Journal of Behavioral Decision Making , 33(4), 411–426), where participants who went through a brief perspective-taking intervention showed a reduced preference–expectation link when making predictions about the 2016 U.S. presidential election. We used a similar intervention and extended their research to the 2020 U.S. presidential election. In contrast to Rose and Aspiras, the link between people’s preferences and their expectations was not affected by the perspective-taking intervention. Regardless of whether participants took the perspective of another person or not, they exhibited a strong tendency to predict that their preferred candidate would win. Differences between our study and the study by Rose and Aspiras are discussed, as are the implications of our findings.
 wishful thinking optimism prediction elections

Details

Metrics

1 Record Views
Logo image