Dumb And Less Dumb

Matt Yglesias's blog apprised your faithful 'Dlogger of a study and an update of the study by D. Klein and Z. Buturovic, from Econ Journal Watch. The original study, published last year, suggested liberals have a worse understanding of many economic issues than do conservatives and libertarians, based on responses to an eight-question survey. The trouble, as the authors point out in the update just published, is that all eight questions challenged liberal positions, e.g. "Minimum wage laws raise unemployment," to which statement disagreement is "unenlightened."

In the update, nine questions were asked that challenge conservative positions, e.g. "A dollar means more to a poor person than it does to a rich person" (disagreement unenlightened). Liberals scored better.

The 'Dlog concurs with Yglesias that what the studies demonstrate is confirmation bias: people focus on things that confirm their own convictions. The 'Dlog just wishes to quibble a little further with question wording: the final two questions on the update are as follows (italics theirs):

16. When two people complete a voluntary transaction, they both necessarily come away better off.

and

17. When two people complete a voluntary transaction, it is necessarily the case that everyone else is unaffected by their transaction.

In true/false questions, words like necessarily (and always and never) are big hints that the answer is false. Any child should be able to imagine a voluntary transaction wherein one party comes away worse off. (Cases of fraud, for example.) So in the half of the quiz that's supposed to stump conservatives, the answers are being broadcast--in italics, no less. No hint words or italics were used in the original study.

So we may also conclude that 73.2% of libertarians are dumber than children.