Impact of conformity bias on candidates to voters perception (PR2)

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

Voting decisions are at the heart of democratic societies, as they shape the composition of governments and determine the policies that govern our lives. However, the choices individuals make at the ballot box are influenced by a myriad of factors that impact their decision-making process. Exploring and understanding these factors is crucial for comprehending voter's behavior and the dynamics of elections.

People often behave alike when they know each other well. Friends, for example, frequently vote for the same party, send their children to similar schools, choose the same types of vacations or enjoy eating at certain restaurants and not at others. Groups are formed by such commonalities and they pose a fundamental question for social science. The appeal, for instance, of the Pareto criterion in welfare economics and the ‘will of the people’ as a justification for democratic decision-making depends on being able to identify individuals with their preference and this becomes problematic if an individual’s preferences change with those of their peers. Hung and Plott (2001) interpret the evidence from their information cascade experiment as telling in favour of information transmission and against preference change in the explanation of behavioural conformity. But, the evidence on the unpredictability of music bandwagons in Salganik et al.’s (2006) experiment is difficult to reconcile with information transmission alone.

Conformity bias is the tendency to change one's beliefs or behavior to fit in others.This change happens in response to either real or perceived group pressure: in other words, others can influence us even when they are not physically present. Starting with the seminal experiments of Sherif (1935) and Asch (1956), hundreds of social psychological studies have found that humans' decisions are strongly influenced by the opinions of others, even when making simple perceptual decisions.

Confirmation bias is one example of how humans sometimes process information in an illogical, biased manner. The manner in which a person knows and understands the world is often affected by factors that are simply unknown to that person. Philosophers note that people have difficulty processing information in a rational, unbiased manner once they have developed an opinion about an issue. Humans are better able to rationally process information, giving equal weight to multiple viewpoints, if they are emotionally distant from the issue (although a low level of confirmation bias can still occur when an individual has no vested interests).

Statement of the Problem

This study aims to find out the impact of conformity bias on candidates to voters' decision.

Specifically, this study sought to answer the following questions:

What is the demographic profile of the senior high students when taken as a whole

and when grouped according to:

a. Sex

b. Strand

c. Section

d. Age

2. What is the effect of conformity bias on candidates to voters' decision?

3. Is there a significant relationship between the demographic profile of the respondents and their academic performance?

Hypothesis

In this section of the research, the researchers present their own assumptions and hypothesis, such as:

1. There is no significant relationship between the demographic profile of the respondents and their academic performance.

Theoretical Framework

According to the theory of, B Douglas Bernheim. This paper analyzes a model of social interaction in which individuals care about status as well as "intrinsic" utility (which refers to utility derived directly from consumption). Status is assumed to depend on public perceptions about an individual's predispositions rather than on the individual's actions. However, since predispositions are unobservable, actions signal predispositions and therefore affect status. When status is sufficiently important relative to intrinsic utility, many individuals conform to a single, homogeneous standard of behavior, despite heterogeneous underlying preferences. They are willing to conform because they recognize that even small departures from the social norm will seriously impair their status. The fact that society harshly censures all nonconformists is not simply assumed (indeed, status varies smoothly with perceived type); rather, it is produced endogenously. Despite this penalty, agents with sufficiently extreme preferences refuse to conform. The model provides an explanation for the fact that standards of behavior govern some activities but do not govern others. It also suggests a theory of how standards of behavior might evolve in response to changes in the distribution of intrinsic preferences. In particular, for some values of the preference parameters, norms are both persistent and widely followed; for other values, norms are transitory and confined to small groups. Thus the model produces both customs and fads. Finally, an extension of the model suggests an explanation for the development of multiple subcultures, each with its own distinct norm.

Conceptual Framework

This research focuses on the main topic. The researchers aim to address and find solutions to the primary problem concerning the impact of conformity bias on candidates to voters' decision to the senior high school humss students. The difference between conformity and conformity bias in collectivist cultures, conformity is more valued. Conformity bias is the tendency to make decisions or judgments based on other people's behavior. Once one person in a class cheats on a test, for example, others may be more willing to cheat because they see that it is acceptable to the group. (Jun 22, 2024)

Figure 1. Schematic Diagram of the Conceptual Framework

Scope and Limitations of the Study

This study aims to assess the impact conformity bias on candidates to voters' decision on selected grade twelve (12) students of Senior High School HUMSS (Humanities and Social Sciences) students. The following are the scope and delimitations of this study. This research encompasses several individuals who will serve as respondents to the survey questionnaire, through purposive sampling. The researchers obtained 20 participants using the random technique from the strand of humss.(Humanities and Social Sciences), Senior High School students of Himamaylan.

Definition of Terms

Conformity Bias: The tendency to align beliefs and behaviors with a perceived majority, influencing voters' decisions based on the popularity of candidates rather than personal evaluations.

Candidates: Individuals seeking election to a specific position, evaluated by voters in this study.

Voters' Decision: The process by which voters choose a candidate, considering their policies and personal preferences.

Impact: The influence of conformity bias on voters' decision-making, potentially swaying them toward candidates they might not choose independently.

Grade 12 HUMSS Students: The specific demographic group studied to understand the effects of conformity bias on their voting decisions.

Simple Random Sampling: Simple random sampling (SRS) is a probability sampling method where researchers randomly choose participants from a population. All population members have an equal probability of being selected. This method tends to produce representative, unbiased samples.

Significance of the Study

This study examines how conformity bias affects voter decisions, particularly among Grade 12 HUMSS students, and holds significance for various stakeholders:

School Administration. Informed decision-making insights into how social pressures influence student engagement in elections.

Teachers. Helps develop strategies to teach students about social influences on decision-making.

Parents. Understanding teenagers' decisions provides context for conversations about voting and personal values.

Students. Empowering informed decisions helps students recognize the influence of conformity bias on their choices.

Community. Promoting informed voting aids initiatives that raise awareness about social pressures in voting.

Future Researchers. Expanding research lays groundwork for future studies on conformity bias across different contexts.

CHAPTER 2

Review of Related Literature and Studies

This chapter presents the relevant literature and studies that the researcher considered in strengthening the importance of the present study on the impact of conformity bias on candidates to voters' decisions.

LOCAL STUDIES

Based on the study of (Wong, 2022) titled “Philippine elections and the politics behind it”,Philippine elections are largely personality-driven, with candidates emphasizing their charisma and popularity over policy platforms or track records. This is exacerbated by the country's plurality voting system, which allows unpopular candidates with solid support to win without a majority. The lack of a run-off election and the prevalence of vote buying further contribute to this phenomenon, resulting in a system where voters choose who will govern them but not necessarily how they will be governed. The limited authority of the vice president, who is largely dependent on the president, and the deeply-rooted patronage system that fuels money politics during elections.

According to the study of (Serrano,2022) titled “Bias everywhere, beware!”,the intense exchange of thoughts, be it educational or in hate-filled language, can be witnessed on various social media platforms. The word “bias” has become the talk of the town. It gives a label to anyone who is not in agreement with another person’s cause. Used loosely, bias is generally defined as a partiality that prevents objective consideration of an issue or situation.Bias does not only arise during election period. It is always around because it is innate to every human being. Various behavioral studies have proven that when people are faced with complex decisions, they often rely on basic judgments and preferences by simplifying the situation rather than rationally acting on it. Biases also exist in finance. They have led to suboptimal financial outcomes and even financial market anomalies such as crashes and bubbles. These types of biases are collectively called behavioral finance biases.Behavioral finance bias is either based on faulty reasoning or emotions. Faulty reasoning is cured through better information and education. However, biases arising from emotions or feelings are hard to correct because they stem from the unconscious level such as impulses and intuitions.

According to ( Rye,2024) study titled “Winners always cheat? Regional identity and the myth of a rigged 2022 Philippine presidential election”, The 2022 presidential election in the Philippines is an historical turning point not only for marking the return of the Marcos family to the country's highest office but also due to the initial claim of electoral fraud that raised concerns about the integrity of automated polling in the country.

In the context of the May 2022 election, the findings do not identify any clear demographic pattern linked to a lack of confidence or skepticism regarding the credibility of the election results. Instead, compelling evidence indicates that the belief in a rigged election is limited to a specific subset of voters aligned with the geographical support base of a defeated presidential candidate. The findings contribute to nuancing electoral dynamics in the Philippines in a number of ways. First, they dispel the myth of an impaired election floated by media and other international watchdogs immediately after the election. Second, the findings suggest that as citizens navigate their democratic responsibilities, their regional identity becomes a lens through which the fairness, transparency, and legitimacy of the Normative proponents of a participatory approach to political decision making suggest thatdeliberation can lead to revelatory discussionand the resolution of political conflicts (Gutmann andThompson 1996; Habermas 1996; Macedo 2010).

According to the study of (Artes, Garganta, Meneses, &Migue,2023), “Kinship is the foundation of society to teach the youth to see reality”. Hence, kinship’s influence affects the youth’s decisions in their everyday lives, including political preferences. A generation gap between the older and younger members may signify the former’s influence to be coercive or persuasive to the latter, especially in their decisions. Thus, it conveys the similarities and differences between kinship and youths’ preferences on whom they will vote for during the elections. It revealed that political activeness, preferences, and expectations from the mayoral candidate, and lastly, the effect of the influence of kinship encompasses the youth voters’ free will and limitations to choose their preferred candidates.

According to the study of Magcamit (2022), titled “We’re Feeling It: Philippines Voters’ Emotional Beliefs in Presidential Candidates”,Emotions underlying voter decision might explain Philippine voters’ overwhelming support for Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as the leading candidate for president of the country, even when the historical record of his family’s notoriety suggests otherwise.erdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr. remains the most favoured candidate for the May 2022 presidential elections in the Philippines. Marcos Jr. garnered a 60% public support rating in the latest Pulse Asia survey. This puts him significantly ahead of his closest rival, incumbent vice president Leni Robredo, who slid from 16% to just 15%. For the fiercest critics of Marcos and his notorious family, none of this makes sense. How can the son and namesake of a dictator Filipinos ousted in 1986 for economic mismanagement and human rights violations remain hugely popular? What explains the Marcos family’s enduring appeal to millions of Filipinos, especially among those who lived under the late Marcos’s kleptocratic ‘conjugal dictatorship’?

Philippine watchers need to confront and take voters’ emotions more seriously if we want to explain why Filipinos vote the way they do.

It is crucial to point out here that the voters’ ‘pro-Marcos’ or ‘pro-Robredo’ beliefs may change when they are presented with credible evidence. But reversing these beliefs is often difficult, since what voters will eventually accept as convincing explanations will be significantly determined by their prior beliefs. Even though voters have the capacity to change their beliefs based on subsequent evidence, they routinely pick and choose evidence that will fit and support their own beliefs (confirmation bias, in other words).

Emotions are some of the most powerful engines driving voters’ decisions, leading many Filipinos to defiantly support Marcos Jr., while some push for the ‘radical love’ narrative offered by Robredo. The impudence of the Marcos supporters in defending and remaining loyal to the candidate and his family underscores how clashing emotions and emotional beliefs guide the selection, interpretation, and assessment of evidence by Filipino voters on the Marcos family’s history.

Instead of discounting emotions as the opposite of rationality, Philippine watchers need to confront and take these emotions more seriously if we want to more accurately explain why Filipino voters vote the way they do. Removing emotions from the equation prevents us from fully understanding how voters decide who seems to be the most credible and trustworthy presidential candidate. Discounting these invisible albeit powerful emotions creates an inaccurate picture of ‘politics without passion’. As voting is an emotional act, cooler heads need to respect voter sentiment to properly understand Filipino politics.

Book on Psychographics Study titled “Restudying the Filipino voters today” ,THE STUDY OF VOTING AND ELECTIONS, There are various ways of studying voting and elections. One possibility is to analyze voting and elections in relation to the position taken by the candidates on relevant issues or in relation to campaign organizations and events. Such a study involves looking into party and/or candidate platforms and speeches, focusing on campaign strategies and machinery build-up. Trends, in this way, can be established by examining changes in the election results over time. This approach, which may be called “journalistic” analysis because it is often used by media in its election coverage, delves more into the intricacies of campaign organizations and events.

Reporters focus on the number of votes garnered by certain candidates in areas that define social groupings such as the urban poor and workers’ communities or the middle class subdivisions. They describe candidates’ strategies, organizations and personalities. But there are limitations to this kind of approach. It always assumes that machineries and election events really have significant impact on individual voters. It does not mean, however, that analyzing campaign machineries, candidates’ personalities and election returns are useless as sources of information to understand voting behavior. But individual voting can best be understood by studying directly individual electorate either through qualitative research methods such as the focused-group interviews or participant-observation or through quantitative method surveys.

The patron-client relations framework has been used to describe electoral politics in the Philippines. In this framework, political leaders who are of a higher socio-economic status (patron), acquire power by providing material benefits to people of lower status (client), who in turn, commit their votes to the patron during elections. Electoral exercises are often oriented to more personal and practical concerns as manifested during election campaigns where candidates woo voters not through programs of government but through favors and promises of material reward. Other approaches to the study of electoral politics have also been rendered using the historico-structuralist approach which contends that the “focus should be on the structures of inequality which allows for the persistence of patronage politics in society, rather than on a historical notion of reciprocity advanced in the patron-client concept.” There are also studies that describe Philippine elections as a contest not of political parties but alliances of wealthy families who often control private armies and a wide patronage network. This approach contends that the network based on clans influences the vote of the electorate.

International

According To Achen and Bartels's (2016) recent book “Democracy for Realists makes the case that voters have difficulty acting in rational ways’’. Instead, they fall prey to biases like myopia, concern with irrelevant events, and motivated reasoning. Most severe, they argue, is the influence of group membership on voting behavior. Indeed, they argue that a group-based account of democracy, where voters’ group identities influence their behavior, is a more accurate account of the way that democracy actually works.

While Achen and Bartels (2016) make a powerful case for the centrality of these biases, the evidence for this perspective is lacking in two ways that we remedy in this article. First, most studies focus on political elections that feature two characteristics that might encourage group-based biases.Further, modern political elections are conducted with secret ballots. Voters can thus indulge their prejudices without any social censure. Relaxing these conditions by considering situations where voters are well-informed and vote publicly might diminish some biases, although they could also exacerbate other biases if voters are held accountable by particular groups for their public votes. Indeed, this was the reason for the introduction of the secret ballot.

The assertion that “The causal link between the civic duty to vote and turnout is based on the theoretical assumption that attitudes precede and cause political behavior” (Galais and Blais, 2016) is in line with the MFS, as is the finding by Gidengli et al. (2016) that the norm of voting is learned when an individual becomes eligible to vote.

Norm-guided voting behavior might have a strong effect on voter turnout (Blais and Galais, 2016: 61) and appears to be an aspect of political culture (Blais and Achen, 2019: 494). However, under certain conditions regarding controversial attitudes shared among a voter’s peer groups, the abstention script might be activated and the voting norm might be suppressed by factors of social context or competitive norms, resulting in the automatic or controlled inhibition of conformity with this norm in a specific situation, such as Election Day.

This category of voting behavior is thus driven by ethical resp. moral obligation in regard to democratic principles (e.g. the belief that a citizen has to maintain or inspirit democracy by electoral participation, or that the individual right to vote—the royal law of all democrats—appears to be something precious), while abstention is interpreted as the “wrong” action. Therefore, these eligible voters cast a ballot independently of the election outcome (Blais and Galais, 2016).

According to the study of JJ Bissell,( 2015), titled “Conformity bias and catastrophic social change”, The consequences of conformity bias—that is, an individual's tendency to conform to majority held standards or opinions—are considered on the dissemination of ideas, fashions and behavioural trends in human populations. As a working example, they describe a qualitative behavioural transmission model based on three classes of individuals (namely ‘potential trend followers’, ‘trend imitators’, and trend ‘pioneers’) in which trend adoption is determined by non‐linear biasing. Notably, we demonstrate that sigmoidal conformity bias can lead to catastrophic ‘tipping‐point’ transitions, with niche fashions and behavioural patterns gaining sudden mass appeal. These kinds of ‘tipping points’ are not predicted by the model when conventional (epidemiology inspired) bi‐linear incidence is employed, indicating the possible importance of conformity bias in driving abrupt changes to trend popularity.

According to the study of (Arnesen, Broderstad, Johannesson, and Linde, 2024), titled “Beyond the Ballot: The Impact of Voting Margin and Turnout on the Legitimacy of Referendum Outcomes in Europe”, Under what conditions do referendums legitimise political decisions? Being responsive to the will of the people is an important aspect of legitimate democratic governance. In a politically turbulent time characterised by the gradual erosion of political trust and widespread success of populist parties and leaders, redelegation of political decision-making power from elected representatives to direct democratic procedures has sometimes been proposed as an instrument for strengthening democratic legitimacy.

Referendums between two alternative decision outcomes constitute the most typical manifestation of majority rule that also is used in most contemporary democratic societies around the world (cf. De Vreese and Boomgaarden, 2005; Morel and Qvortrup, 2017). It represents a simple form of decision-making, where all eligible voters have an equal opportunity to influence the outcome, and ultimately, the alternative with the most votes wins.

According to the study of Laursen,  Veenstra, (2021), “Toward understanding the functions of peer influence” Peer influence is easier to define than to operationalize. A representative definition is as follows: “Influence occurs when an individual acts or thinks in ways that he or she might not otherwise act or think, an effect that can be attributed to experiences with friends and affiliates” (Laursen, 2018, p. 447). Thus, peer influence is defined as instances where one person affects, or is affected by, one other or multiple others who are similar in age.

Change is a common theme in definitions of influence: Individuals change in response to friends and affiliates. The alterations wrought by peer influence can be for good or for ill. Peer influence is a neutral term, agnostic to the type of change. In this sense, peer influence stands apart from peer pressure and socialization, which describe (respectively) maladaptive and adaptive change (Laursen, 2018). Peer pressure has negative connotations that imply compulsion or persuasion, whereas socialization is a positive term that refers to the transmission of skills and competencies. Influence subsumes both constructs but is synonymous with neither.

Influence assumes directional change. The direction of change is determined by the characteristics of the partner or group, with heightened similarity as the end point. Peer influence almost always increases resemblances between friends and affiliates. Although the prospect of complementarity has been raised (Kindermann & Gest, 2018), there is little evidence that peer influence during adolescence promotes differentiated roles and or enhances distinctions.

“Impact of Confirmation Bias on Decision Making”, Confirmation bias exerts a profound impact on decision making across various domains, including politics, healthcare, finance, and consumer behaviour. Research in these domains provides insights into the cognitive processes underlying decision making and elucidates the role of confirmation bias in perpetuatingsuboptimal decisions.

Vote Buying

In many countries, vote-buying (gifts of goods or money before the election, aimedat persuading recipients to vote in a particular way, or to vote at all) ispervasiveand pre-electoral transfers to voters are substantial. Across the 17 countries surveyed in the 2005-06 wave of the Afrobarometer survey, 19 percent of more than20,000 respondents reported that they had been offered a gift in the last election.

As in the intervention, Fujiwara and Wantchekon (2013) also provide voterswith more neutral policy information, but in the context of deliberative town hallmeetings in Benin, where candidate positions on policies may or may not havebeen revealed. Their intervention did not have a significant effect on survey responses regarding vote buying, though it did significantly affect a broader indexof survey responses that they jointly characterized as reflecting voter attitudes towards clientelist forms of electoral mobilization.

Our information intervention emphasizes broadly-targeted spending programs in a context where targeted pre-electoral transfers (vote buying) are common. In empirical research on Benin, Keefer and Khemani (2014) find that radio broadcasts of information touting the benefits of health and education services shift household preferences towards candidates who promise jobs for a few rather than more health and education benefits for all. However, consistent with the results reported below, they also find that exposure to this programming has no effect on preferences for candidates who give electoral gifts, when it is unclear whether those gifts come at the expense of health and education services. In addition, this information does not seem to affect actual government behavior: villages with better access to radio do not have better schools nor access to more, free, anti-malaria bed nets.