Regenwetter Michel, Kim Aeri, Kantor Arthur, Ho Moon-Ho R
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Chapaign, IL 61820, USA.
Psychol Sci. 2007 Jul;18(7):629-35. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01950.x.
In economics and political science, the theoretical literature on social choice routinely highlights worst-case scenarios and emphasizes the nonexistence of a universally best voting method. Behavioral social choice is grounded in psychology and tackles consensus methods descriptively and empirically. We analyzed four elections of the American Psychological Association using a state-of-the-art multimodel, multimethod approach. These elections provide rare access to (likely sincere) preferences of large numbers of decision makers over five choice alternatives. We determined the outcomes according to three classical social choice procedures: Condorcet, Borda, and plurality. Although the literature routinely depicts these procedures as irreconcilable, we found strong statistical support for an unexpected degree of empirical consensus among them in these elections. Our empirical findings stand in contrast to two centuries of pessimistic thought experiments and computer simulations in social choice theory and demonstrate the need for more systematic descriptive and empirical research on social choice than exists to date.
在经济学和政治学中，关于社会选择的理论文献经常强调最坏的情况，并强调不存在一种普遍最优的投票方法。行为社会选择以心理学为基础，从描述性和实证性的角度探讨共识方法。我们使用一种先进的多模型、多方法方法分析了美国心理学会的四次选举。这些选举提供了难得的机会，使我们能够了解大量决策者对五个选择方案（可能是真诚的）偏好。我们根据三种经典的社会选择程序确定选举结果：孔多塞方法、博尔达计数法和简单多数法。尽管文献通常将这些程序描述为不可调和的，但我们发现有强有力的统计支持表明，在这些选举中，它们之间存在出人意料的高度实证共识。我们的实证研究结果与社会选择理论中两个世纪以来的悲观思想实验和计算机模拟形成了对比，表明需要对社会选择进行比目前更系统的描述性和实证性研究。
