School of Management, University of Bath, Bath, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2023 Nov 22;18(11):e0289312. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0289312. eCollection 2023.
On June 23rd 2016 the UK voted to leave the European Union. The period leading up to the referendum was characterized by a significant volume of misinformation and disinformation. Existing literature has established the importance of cognitive ability in processing and discounting (mis/dis) information in decision making. We use a dataset of couples within households from a nationally representative UK survey to investigate the relationship between cognitive ability and the propensity to vote Leave / Remain in the 2016 UK referendum on European Union membership. We find that a one standard deviation increase in cognitive ability, all else being equal, increases the likelihood of a Remain vote by 9.7%. Similarly, we find that an increase in partner's cognitive ability further increases the respondent's likelihood of a Remain vote (7.6%). In a final test, restricting our analysis to couples who voted in a conflicting manner, we find that having a cognitive ability advantage over one's partner increases the likelihood of voting Remain (10.9%). An important question then becomes how to improve individual and household decision making in the face of increasing amounts of (mis/dis) information.
2016 年 6 月 23 日，英国投票决定退出欧盟。在公投之前的一段时间里，充斥着大量的错误信息和虚假信息。现有文献已经证明，在决策过程中处理和（错误/虚假）信息的认知能力很重要。我们使用了来自英国全国代表性调查的家庭内夫妇的数据集，来研究认知能力与 2016 年英国欧盟成员国公投中投票离开/留下的倾向之间的关系。我们发现，在其他条件相同的情况下，认知能力提高一个标准差，就会使留欧的可能性增加 9.7%。同样，我们发现，伴侣认知能力的提高进一步增加了受访者留欧的可能性（7.6%）。在最后一项测试中，我们将分析限制在以冲突方式投票的夫妇中，发现与伴侣相比具有认知能力优势会增加投票留欧的可能性（10.9%）。那么，一个重要的问题是，如何在面对越来越多的（错误/虚假）信息的情况下，提高个人和家庭的决策能力。
