How do amnesiacs decide who to vote for? Pretty much like the rest of us.
How can that be? They cannot remember all the information that the rest of us gather from debates, ads and press coverage.
{mosads}My interest in this question goes back a long way. Nearly a decade ago, my column here argued that recall of political advertising is not a measure of effectiveness. Despite my now ancient warning, some consultants and pundits still wrongly equate memorable ads with effective ones.
Indeed, when people hear me make this point they often look at me like I am either insane or particularly stupid.
Self-defense took me to amnesia; I reported a French physician’s dirty trick.
Each time Édouard Claparède arrived to treat a particular amnesiac patient, he would shake her hand, reintroducing himself to a woman who had no recollection of him.
One day he put a pin in his hand before the patient shook it. She pulled her hand away in pain with an expression to match.
The next day Claparède repeated the ritual, this time without the pin in hand. The patient, who had no memory of the doctor, or of the previous day’s incident, nonetheless refused to shake his hand from that day on.
Amnesia prevented memory, but the absence of memory did not preclude learning, and that unremembered knowledge directed behavior.
Recently a group of political scientists, neurologists and psychologists have, in effect, re-enacted Claparède’s original notion in a rigorous experiment explicitly about politics using amnesiacs as subjects.
Patients with brain injuries that caused anterograde amnesia were enlisted along with a group who did not suffer from the disease. The amnesiacs all suffered severe memory impairments as evidenced by test results and the effect on their daily lives.
The participants were read the issue positions candidates designed so that one of the hypothetical candidates had positions closer to those of the subject, while the other’s positions were opposite.
Of course, the amnesiacs could not remember any of the candidates’ positions. Yet, in 18 of 20 trials, they voted for the candidate whose views matched their own. The unimpaired subjects voted for the candidate whose views resembled their own in a very similar 20 of 21 trials.
Here the similarity ended.
After the voting, the control subjects recalled an average of 3.47 of the 9 issue positions they had been told about (not exactly an inspiring feat of memory for issues shortly after hearing them). Not surprisingly, not one of the amnesiac patients could recall even a single issue position of any of the candidates.
That didn’t stop them from explaining their vote when asked to do so. It’s just that the explanations bore no relationship to reality. We know they cast their votes because of the candidates’ positions on the issues.
These subjects ascribed their decision to other factors. When shown the candidate photos again the amnesiacs cited trustworthiness, ability, personal appeal and the like as the reasons behind their choice, despite the fact that they had earlier looked at the same pictures and judged the candidates equal on competence, likability, attractiveness and trustworthiness.
What can we learn from this unusual experiment?
First, as I argued before, recalling a fact is not the same as the fact having some impact on voting through emotional memory or some other mechanism.
So, second, asking voters what ads they recall is often not a useful measure, because it’s not meaningful.
Third, the rationalizations voters give us for their decisions, in focus groups or in response to open-ended questions, are often just that: rationalizations unrelated to the real reasons behind their actions.
The amnesiacs were willing to offer a reason for their vote. We just happen to know it was inaccurate and that they failed to articulate the real reasons for their vote.
Mellman is president of The Mellman Group and has worked for Democratic candidates and causes since 1982. Current clients include the minority leader of the Senate and the Democratic whip in the House.