Mission Accomplished

It's Wednesday. Here's something to think about while we're waiting for the nine Supreme beings to come down from the mountaintop tomorrow and hand us the tablet that will mean life or death for thousands of Americans.

By now, you probably know the recent history of health care reform. The individual mandate—the requirement that everyone purchase health insurance—originally proposed by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, was the cornerstone of Republican health care plans for two decades. They preferred it because it encouraged “individual responsibility.” President Obama opposed the individual mandate during the 2008 campaign, but he and the Jackasses eventually conceded in the hope of gaining conservative support. (Flip!) Then, in 2009, in an even more remarkable turnaround, the Elephants in Congress unanimously decided that the individual mandate was unconstitutional. (Flop!)

As Ezra Klein reports, in 2010, when 14 Republican state attorneys general filed their suit challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), “it was hard to find a law professor in the country who took them seriously.” (Here's an analysis of why the ACA is constitutional.)

How did the corporate media report on the constitutionality of the law? First of all, here's what they were reporting on. There were nine court cases related to the constitutionality of the act. Four of these courts overturned the law and five upheld it. There were also several cases in which courts dismissed complaints without ruling on the constitutionality of the law.

Media Matters looked at all the reports devoted to these courts cases on the nightly newscasts of ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC—a total of 31 segments. Of these 31 segments, 26 (84%) reported decisions that the act was unconstitutional, 3 (10%) reported rulings that it was constitutional, and the remaining 2 (6%) dealt with dismissals. If instead of counting segments, you get out your stopwatch, you find that a remarkable 97% of air time was spent discussing cases that overturned the law.

Unfortunately, the researchers do not report the number of minutes these newscasts devoted to advertisements paid for by pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies and health care providers.

Newspapers were only marginally better. There were 59 articles about these court cases in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. Thirty-five of them (59%) dealt with rulings that the ACA was unconstitutional, 17 (29%) dealt with decisions that it was constitutional, and 8 dealt with dismissals. Rulings of unconstitutionality were far more likely to make the front page.

It's possible that, initially, the greater attention given to rulings that the ACA was unconstitutional was due to the fact that journalists were surprised by these decisions, given the near-unanimity of their legal experts. However, that does not account for the consistency and longevity of these findings.

The bottom line is that this unbalanced coverage appears to have had its intended effect. A Gallup poll released earlier this month found that 72% of Americans think the ACA is unconstitutional. Several polls have found that the majority favor repeal of the law. For example, Rasmussen reported that, as of June 23-24, 54% of likely voters favor repeal and 39% oppose it. Although, as my colleague Paul Ricci reports, a majority of those folks favor starting work on a new health care reform bill, it's hard to imagine that any new health care legislation could get through Congress in the foreseeable future.

"We Need You to Tell Us That This is What Happened"

Not surprisingly, news coverage of Tuesday's defense presentation at the Jerry Sandusky trial focused on the testimony of Dorothy Sandusky. People are understandably interested in the reactions of a woman who, if her husband is guilty, has been publicly humiliated. However, there was other testimony that day that is potentially more important, testimony about the possibility of suggestive questioning of alleged victims by the Pennsylvania state police.

First of all, it is important to remember that Victim 4 was the prosecution's star witness. He was the first alleged victim to testify, and he gave the most detailed account of his alleged molestation. He is the one who claimed that oral sex happened “almost every time I'm over there. And I'm over there two or three times a week.”

The following four paragraphs are from the inside page of Wednesday's Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, about halfway through the article.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Amendola [Mr. Sandusky's attorney] called state police Cpl. Scott Rossman and retired Cpl. Joseph Leiter in a bid to show jurors that investigators led the accusers to make up stories about the alleged abuse. He played a tape of an April 21, 2011, interview in which Cpl. Leiter tells the man who later would become known as Victim 4 that he was not the first person interviewed, that there were nine others, and that their stories were similar.

“There's a pretty well-defined progression in the way he operated and still operates I guess to some degree,” the officer said. He went on to tell the would-be accuser that in some cases, Mr. Sandusky allegedly went beyond touching or fondling children. “There have been acts of oral sex that have taken place,” and an incident “classified as rape.”

“I don't want you to feel ashamed because you're a victim in this whole thing. What happened happened. He took advantage of you. We need you to tell us that this is what happened. We need you to tell us as graphically as you can what took place,” the corporal said.

Under questioning by the lead prosecutor, Senior Deputy Attorney General Joseph McGettigan, Cpl. Leiter defended his method and said he never intended to elicit anything but the truth from the interview.

Although I only know what I read in the paper, this seems almost like a textbook illustration of how not to interview a possible victim of child abuse.

In the ' 80s and '90s, there were a number of high profile cases—such as the Little Rascals Daycare in North Carolina and the McMartin Preschool in California—in which adults were falsely convicted of molesting children on the basis of testimony elicited either by police officers or by psychologists and social workers employed by the prosecution. The existence of false memories is well documented by research. The false memory syndrome refers to cases in which people who sincerely believe they have been sexually abused, but where their recall of abuse is apparently a memory disturbance, or confabulation. Elizabeth Loftus, among others, has shown that adults can be induced by repeated suggestive interviews to have highly emotional false memories about events their childhood that actually never happened.

At the root of suggestive questioning is the fact that interviewers often exhibit confirmatory bias—the tendency to search for information that confirms their beliefs and ignore information that might disprove them. Stephen Ceci and Maggie Bruck have summarized the research literature on interviewer behaviors which encourage false accusations of child abuse. Among them are:

• Stereotyping the suspect as a bad person.
• Telling the witness that peers have reported abuse.
• Suggestive questioning. A suggestive question refers to a possible answer in the question itself, i.e., “Did he touch your privates?” rather than “What did he do next?” In the worst cases, interviewers describe an abuse scenario reported by others and ask the witnesses whether something like that happened to them.
• Repeated questioning. Interviewers ask the same questions several times until they get the desired response.
• Selective reinforcement of responses. We usually think of reinforcement as attention and praise that occurs after a response. However, reinforcement can be anticipated before the fact when interviewers state or imply that they will be pleased if the witness can make an accusation.

All of these conditions can be read into the description of yesterday's testimony except repeated questioning. The New York Times fills in that particular blank.

The interviewers acknowledged that some of the witnesses at first insisted that nothing untoward occurred and told of abuse only on a second or third police interview, but that such reluctance was not unusual.

It is important to remember that this is not just hearsay. We don't have to speculate about what was said to Victim 4. The interview is on tape. How many other interviews were tape recorded? Was the same interrogation strategy followed with other alleged victims? How many suspected victims were interviewed who did not report abuse despite repeated questioning?

The fact that the investigators knew that the tape was running makes it clear that they were not consciously attempting to falsely implicate Mr. Sandusky. It suggests instead that they were poorly trained in the technique of interviewing alleged victims of sexual abuse and were unaware of the implications of their behavior.

The existence of suggestive questioning does not directly address the question of Mr. Sandusky's guilt or innocence. In either case, this is an unfortunate situation. If he's actually guilty, the incompetence of these officers could have jeopardized the case against him. If he's innocent, it may have contributed to a false conviction.

Evergreening

The Incidental Economist (a blog) alerted me to an article by medical student Nicholas Downing and three colleagues exposing the outrageous shenanigans of Abbott Laboratories, maker of fenofibrate, a lipid-modifying drug that claims to reduce the risk of heart disease.

In the U. S., patent protection on a new drug expires after 20 years. Since the clock starts ticking before clinical trials can begin, by the time a drug gets Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval, it typically has seven to twelve years of patent protection. After that, other companies are free to sell generic equivalents, which usually cost less than half the price of the original. The goal of pharmaceutical houses is to extend that patent protection as long as possible by whatever means necessary.

Abbott did not do the research and development that led to fenofibrate. They bought it from another company. They marketed it as Tricor-1 in 1998. However, their patent was about to expire, and in 2000, another company, Novapharm, announced its intention to produce a generic version. Abbott then filed suit for patent infringement. This was a frivolous lawsuit, but such suits are routine because when they are filed, they automatically result in an injunction against the generic company which prevents them from marketing the generic for 30 months. Drug companies almost always lose these infringement cases, but they file them anyway because the amount of money they make during the 30 month waiting period is far greater than the cost of the lawsuit.

The 30 months also gave Abbott time to get a patent for Tricor-2 and introduce it to the market. Tricor-2 was identical to Tricor-1 except for the dosage. Because it was the same, no new clinical trials were required. By the time the 30 month period had expired, Tricor-1 was no longer available and Tricor-2 had cornered 97% of the fenofibrate market. It was useless to produce the generic version of Tricor-1 because Tricor-2 had different dosage levels, and pharmacists can only substitute generics when the dosage levels are the same.

So the generic company announced its intention to produce a generic Tricor-2. At this point, the story begins to resemble the plot of the film Groundhog Day. New lawsuit by Abbott. Another 30 month wait. Abbott announces Tricor-3. It captures 96% of the market. Generic company intends to produce generic Tricor-3. New lawsuit. Another 30 month wait. Abbott announces Filibrix. Filibrix is fenofibric acid rather than fenofibrate, which requires new clinical trials, but gets them an additional three years of patent protection extending it to 2012.

By this time, the generic companies had noticed the futility of their strategy, so they filed suit against Abbott for violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Abbott eventually settled that suit for $300 million, which was about 4% of what they made selling various versions of fenofibrate. The authors estimate that the cost to the public of using Abbott's versions of fenofibrate rather than their generic equivalents is $700 million a year.

This is not an isolated incident. Several other drug companies have done the same thing.  When the patent is about to expire on one of their lucrative drugs, they make a trivial change and market it under a new name in order to extend their period of exclusivity. This common practice is called “evergreening.” (Get it?) It succeeds in part because doctors don't pay attention to what's going on. However, even if they had known about Abbott's psychopathic behavior, there was nothing doctors or pharmacists could do because no generic equivalent of fenofibrate has yet made it to the market.

To add insult to injury, a large outcome study published in 2005 showed that fenofibrate was ineffective in reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease. But apparently the doctors weren't paying attention to that either, because as of 2010, fenofibrate sales were still increasing.

There is a serious problem with the FDA's system of granting patents. They only require clinical trials that compare the new drug with a placebo—an inactive pill that supposedly controls for patient expectations. This allows different drug companies to market nearly identical drugs, none of which are more effective than the others. It also allows companies like Abbott to “evergreen” by relabeling old drugs under new names. A more sensible standard would be to compare the proposed new drug to the best existing treatment and only grant a patent if the new drug produces a significant improvement in patient outcomes.

In our capitalist wonderland, it's useless to urge “corporate persons” such as Abbott to behave more responsibly. They will pursue profit however they can. It's probably also unrealistic to expect doctors to read medical journals or prescribe available generics. They get their pharmaceutical information from drug salespersons bearing gifts—everything from ballpoint pens to free trips to Las Vegas (to attend a medical “seminar,” of course). It would be nice if Congress would make this legalized bribery illegal, but since they're doing the same thing, that's not likely to happen.

Downing and his colleagues only suggest one governmental remedy—elimination of the 30 month hold on the generic during a lawsuit. Otherwise, they just recommend consciousness raising among patients, doctors, and pharmacists. Good luck with that.

Don't Drink and Vote

Occasionally research brings what seemed to be separate topics together in an interesting way. I've previously noted that one purpose of this blog is to encourage thinking slowly—deliberate, effortful processing of information—in the hope of responding rationally to difficult social and political problems. A recent article by Scott Eidelman and three colleagues suggests that the opposite of slow thought—rapid, low effort processing of information—encourages political conservatism. They present four studies to support this claim.

As most of us know, alcohol consumption interferes with deliberative thought while leaving automatic responding largely intact. The first study was done as people were leaving a bar. Participants were asked to answer some questions and exhale into a breathalyzer, which measured their blood alcohol level. The questions included a ten item measure of liberalism-conservatism, as well as whether they considered themselves a liberal or a conservative. Statistically controlling for gender, education and political ideology, the authors found that the higher the participants' blood alcohol level, the more they scored toward the conservative end of the scale. Both self-identified liberals and conservatives were more conservative when they were more intoxicated. (In case you're wondering, liberals and conservatives were equally likely to get drunk.)

The other three studies were laboratory experiments. In the second, students responded to another opinion scale which measured liberalism and conservatism independently of one another. Cognitive load was manipulated by requiring some participants to perform a secondary task (counting tones of different pitches) while filling out the questionnaire. The others merely filled out the scale. Distraction was expected to interfere with their ability to think about the opinion items. As predicted, the participants with the higher cognitive load scored higher in conservatism and lower in liberalism.

In a third study, participants rated the favorability of liberal and conservative concepts such as “civil rights” and “law and order.” Opportunity to think was manipulated by giving some participants only 1.5 seconds to respond to each item, while the others could take as long as they wanted. The high time pressure subjects rated the conservative terms more favorably. They also rated the liberal terms less favorably, but the difference was not statistically significant.

Finally, in the last study, participants rated the liberal and conservative concepts under instructions to think quickly or slowly. In the low effort condition, they were told to “give your first, immediate response to the terms” and to not “think too hard.” In the high effort condition, the instructions were to “think hard about each term,” to “take your time and give a careful and thoughtful response.” The task was followed by a pop quiz—a recognition memory test. Participants were shown many concepts and asked to identify the ones they had previously rated. The low effort participants rated the conservative terms more favorably than the high effort participants. (As before, the effect on liberal terms was not significant.) The recognition memory task served as a measure of depth of thought and, as predicted, it partially accounted for the relationship between low effort thinking and conservatism. (That is, if you statistically eliminate the effect of recognition memory scores, the relationship between low effort and conservatism is reduced, but still statistically significant.)

How do the authors explain these results? First of all, they are not saying that conservatives are less intelligent than liberals (although there is some evidence that this is the case). Both liberals and conservatives were affected by these manipulations. They are also not saying that conservative ideology is cognitively simpler than liberalism (althought there is quite a bit of evidence that this is true). In these studies, independent samples rated the complexity of the liberal and conservative statements and concepts to ensure that they were equally difficult to understand.

Here's their argument: There are three aspects of the content of conservative ideology, all of which we are more likely to believe when processing information automatically, but which we question when we engage in deliberate, effortful thought. They are:

• a tendency to see people as personally responsible for their outcomes, rather than acknowledging that their behavior could be situationally caused.
• an acceptance of heirarchy—inequality between people and groups (such as the rich and the poor).
• a preference for the status quo rather than social change.

Since there is evidence that these three bulwarks of conservative thought are more likely to occur when we are operating on automatic pilot, distracting people, forcing them to respond in a hurry, asking them not to think too hard, or getting them drunk all will make them more conservative. It appears that conservative thinking comes more easily to us. To avoid being reflexive right wingers, we have to put down the beer, turn off the TV, and think about it. That could be a sobering message.

The Media Select Their Candidate

Mitt Romney has charged that the news media are biased in favor of Barack Obama and against him. As usual, the facts are otherwise. (See my previous posts on media bias here and here.) It's not clear whether the Elephants actually believe the liberal bias claim, or are “working the refs.”

This week, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism released is first survey of 2012 campaign coverage in over 11,000 news outlets. The survey analyzed two aspects of news coverage: (1) the frames used to cover campaign news between November 1, 2011 and April 15, 2012, and (2) the tone (positive, negative, or neutral) of the coverage received by each candidate, which was analyzed only from January 1 to April 15. Framing refers to the media's tendency to select certain aspects of the campaign and make them more salient, as if to suggest what is important about presidential elections. Frames were determined by human coders. Tone was analyzed with a computerized content analysis program which recognizes positive, negative and neutral words and phrases. (When the tone of a sample of stories is coded by researchers, the computer and the human coders agree 97% of the time.)

As in previous elections, the media are framing the campaign as a horserace. Pew calls this the strategy frame, and it includes reports on momentum, polling, advertising and fundraising. This frame accounted for 64% of campaign stories. Critics charge that the strategy frame does not give voters the information they need to determine the candidates' positions on issues. That information is included in the categories of domestic issues, foreign issues and the candidate's public record, which collectively account for 16% of the coverage. (Of course, in Romney's case, his past public record is all but meaningless for determining his current position on issues.)

The tone of the news stories about Obama and Romney is summarized below:

	Romney	Obama
Positive	39%	18%
Neutral	29%	34%
Negative	32%	34%

Contrary to Romney's claims, he has received much more favorable coverage than President Obama. In fact, I find it hard to imagine that a sentient being could read, listen to or watch the corporate media and actually believe they favor the President.

As shown above, the tone of stories about Romney has changed over time. They became much more favorable after the Michigan primary on February 28, when it became clear that Romney would be the Elephant nominee. The coverage of President Obama, as you can see, has been unrelentingly negative throughout all 15 weeks of the survey.

My interpretation of these data is fairly straightforward. The owners of the corporate media in this country are overwhelmingly wealthy and politically conservative, and their preferences exert a compelling influence over the behavior of reporters and editors. Previous research has shown that the media traditionally favor candidates from the Elephant Party. This accounts for the negative tone of stories about Obama. Prior to February 28, the media owners were probably split over which Elephant candidate they preferred. As long as Gingrich and Santorum were in the race, they ran quite a few negative stories about Romney. However, once Romney's nomination was inevitable, media ownership closed ranks behind the nominee of their party.

I find it particularly interesting that the media frequently report charges of liberal bias made by Elephant candidates, but almost never report studies such as this one which exonerate them of the charge.

There is no reason to think that either the predominant use of the strategy frame or the tone of the coverage of the candidates will change for the remainder of the campaign. It is also likely that the media will continue to report whatever the candidates say without evaluating whether their statements are true or false, and that they will not investigate and report whether the candidates' current statements are consistent with their past public record. All of these policies will translate into a significant advantage for Romney.

Class Acts

The number of Americans living below the official poverty line is at its highest level in decades. On the other hand, our political leaders are drawn from those Americans who are highest in socioeconomic status. The average wealth of members of Congress is $13.2 million in the Senate and $5.9 million in the House. Eleven percent of Congress are in the top 1% of the income distribution. These Congresspeople are considering taking serious steps to dismantle the social safety net that is critical to the survival of an increasingly large number of poor Americans. What can social psychology tell us about differences in the attitudes of rich and poor Americans toward personal responsibility, and about differences in their willingness to help those in need or to deliberately hurt other people?

A recent series of experiments by social psychologists led by Dacher Keltner at the University of California at Berkeley have studied the psychology of social class. First, a word on how social class was measured. In some studies, it was measured objectively by asking participants to state their own (or their parents') income and educational attainment. Subjective social class was measured by asking participants to place an “X” on one of ten rungs of a ladder representing their status compared to others. Finally, in some studies, social class was manipulated by having participants to write an essay comparing their own life to that of either a rich or a poor American. Comparing yourself to the poor makes you feel richer, while comparing yourself to the rich makes you feel poorer. These different approaches produced generally consistent results.

Explanations of human behavior can be divided into personal causes (some characteristic of the behaving individual) or situational causes (some aspect of the social environment). How do the rich and the poor explain economic inequality? The Berkeley group hypothesized that since poor people have fewer resources, they exert less personal control over their own outcomes, and they see inequality as more a product of situational forces than the rich. Keltner and his colleagues called their participants' attention to inequality in this country by presenting statistical data. Participants were then asked to rate the importance of twelve explanations of inequality. Some of them were personal (talent, hard work) while others were situational (inheritance, discrimination). These studies also included a measure of personal control over one's own life.

As expected, upper class participants gave more personal explanations for wealth and poverty, and the relationship between social class and social explanation was mediated by feelings of personal control over one's own life. (See my earlier post on I. Q. and prejudice for an explanation of how mediational hypotheses are tested.) Subsequent studies showed that these tendencies to explain behavior as personally or situationally caused apply to other outcomes in addition to economic inequality. If members of economic and political elites believe they have earned their favorable position, and that poor people fail because they lack positive traits, will they be more willing to eliminate social programs that to help the poor?

Do upper and lower classes differ in helpfulness? The Berkeley group proposed that, because the poor depend more on other members of their community for help in times of crisis, they would be more sensitive to the needs of others, more compassionate, and more helpful. An alternative possibility is that because the poor have less, they will be more reluctant to give it away and will be less helpful. In one of their studies (called the “dictator game”), participants were given ten points (later to be exchanged for money) and allowed to split them however they chose between themselves and an anonymous partner. Lower class participants were more generous to their partners. In another study, people were asked how much of one's income a person ought to donate to charity. In this study, social class was both measured objectively and manipulated (by having them compare themselves to the rich or the poor). The results are shown in this chart.

The lines labeled lower and upper class rank refer to the manipulations of thinking about the rich or the poor respectively. High and low social class refer to their objective status (family income and education). Using both measures, the poor were more generous. This finding corresponds to real world studies which consistently show that poor people donate a higher percentage of their income to charity than rich people.

One study tested the hypothesis that the helpfulness of the poor is mediated by compassion. Compassion was manipulated by showing a short film about child poverty or a neutral film. Participants were later given an opportunity to help a fellow student in distress. When shown the neutral film, lower class participants were more helpful than upper class participants. When the compassion-inducing film was shown, there was no difference. The rich were capable of being helpful when reminded of the need to be compassionate. However, the poor appeared to be spontaneously helpful.

Might the upper class's lack of helpfulness also mean that they are more likely to behave unethically for selfish reasons? The Berkeley group did seven studies of social class differences in unethical behavior. When most Americans think about criminal behavior, they think of lower class street criminals whose behavior is heavily publicized by the media. However, the researchers expected the rich to endorse greed as a legitimate motive and behave more unethically than the poor. Two of the studies were observations of drivers. Wealth was measured by the monetary value of their car. Drivers of expensive cars were more likely to cut off other drivers at a four-way stop and to fail to yield the right of way to pedestrians—both illegal under California law.

In other studies, upper class participants took more candy which, if they hadn't taken it, would have been given to children; cheated more on a laboratory task in order to win a monetary prize; and reported greater willingness to lie, steal and behave unethically in hypothetical scenarios. Finally, the authors demonstrated that the unethical behavior of the rich was mediated by greed. Greed was manipulated by asking some participants to list three reasons why greed might be a good thing. Others completed a different list. They then filled out a measure of willingness to endorse unethical behaviors on the job, such as borrowing money from the cash register overnight. When greed was primed, lower class participants endorsed as much unethical behavior as wealthier participants. Without the greed prime, the usual social class differences were obtained.

These studies are impressive both in number and consistency. Obviously, none of these behaviors rise to the level of the recent financial crimes that have cost middle class Americans billions of dollars. But at the very least, they suggest that mass media stereotypes of the rich and the poor need adjustment. In my last post, I reported studies showing that the decisions made by our political leaders correspond most closely to the preferences of the rich. When the wealthiest Americans decide the future of the country during a long recession, they seem almost certain to increase inequality--a problem that has already gotten far out of hand.

Whose Opinion Matters?

On Monday, the Senate voted 51-45 (nine votes short of the supermajority needed) to block debate on the Buffett Rule that would have required millionaires to pay an income tax rate of at least 30%. A CNN poll showed that 72% of Americans favored the rule. This is just one of many policies—from ending the war in Afghanistan to providing a public option for health insurance—that were favored by a majority of Americans, but not by corporations or wealthy Americans, that have been defeated. How responsive is our political system to public opinion? And to whose opinions does it respond?

These questions are difficult to answer. Prevailing research can only tell us how well legislation corresponds to public opinion, and whose opinions it matches. In other words, we can look at the correlations between the attitudes of the population—or population subgroups—and political decisions. But if a positive correlation is found, that doesn't necessarily mean that the people are influencing their legislators' votes. The politicians could have persuaded the public to accept their policies. Or both the public and their legislators could be reponding to a variety of third variables, such as their shared background, real world events, or media coverage of political issues. Therefore, instead of talking about the public's “influence” on politicians, I will refer to the “consistency” between their opinions.

Early studies of consistency used the box-score method, comparing the majority preference on a particular issue, as indicated by public opinon polls, to subsequent legislative decisions. Chance alone would ensure that legislators would agree with the majority half the time even if they completely disregarded public opinion. Political scientist Alan Monroe found that in over 500 Congressional decisions between 1980 and 1993, the outcomes corresponded with public opinion 55% of the time. This was better than chance agreement (50%), but not much better. If our legislators follow the wishes of the majority 55% of the time, does this mean that we have a responsive government? Monroe reports that between 1960 and 1979, agreement was 63%, so whatever it means, it's going down.

Larry Bartels studied differences in the consistency of U. S. Senators' votes with the attitudes of their constituents of different social classes. He measured the relationship between participants' self-ratings on a 7-point liberalism-conservatism scale and all the decisions made by their Senators between 1988 and 1992. The respondents were divided into approximately equal thirds by income. (For convenience, I'll call them the “rich,” the “middle class” and the “poor.”) Through a complex (but not controversial) mathematical procedure, Bartels estimated the “weight” that should be given to upper, middle and lower class opinion in order to produce the best match with the Senators' decisions.

The opinions of both the middle class and the rich corresponded with the choices of their Senators, but the weight associated with the opinions of the rich was about 50% greater than the weight of the middle class. The opinions of the poor, however, were given no weight at all. (Their opinions were actually slightly negatively related to their Senators' votes.) These class differences were not as great on social issues, such as abortion, as on economic issues, but in all categories, rich people's views were most consistent with the outcome, and the views of the poor were unrelated to the outcome. Of the specific bills Bartels studied, the greatest inequality occurred on a proposal to increase the minimum wage. Here, neither the wishes of the poor nor the middle class had any weight at all, and the decision corresponded exclusively to the opinions of the rich. (I don't need to tell you what the Senators decided.)

Bartels divided the Senators by party affiliation. He found that the Elephants' votes were about twice as consistent with the views of the rich as the Jackasses' votes. Both parties were equally responsive to middle class opinion and equally unresponsive to the poor.

Martin Gilens compared the results of surveys (conducted between 1981 and 2002) asking people whether they favored 1781 proposed policy changes to subsequent votes on those policies. This allowed him to locate the best-fitting curve relating public opinion to Congressional decisions. He found a strong status quo bias. That is, as the percentage of people favoring a policy change increased, its probability of being enacted also went up, but even when a policy had 90% support, its probability of passing was only 46%.

He then divided the country into ten deciles according to income, and compared the opinions of people who were richer than 90% of Americans to the opinions of eight other groups, all the way down to the 10^th percentile of the income distribution. He found that the votes were consistent with the preferences of all ten economic subgroups, but as wealth increased, the correpondence between their preference and the decision increased. However, this analysis may have overestimated the consistency of the attitudes of the poor with politicians' votes, since in most cases they agreed with the rich. Gilens then did an analysis of the 887 cases in which there was significant diagreement on the policy among people at different income levels. Here are two charts showing these results.

The top chart compares the consistency of legislators' votes with people at the 90^th and 10^th percentiles of the income distribution. The positive slope of the 90^th percentile line indicates that as more rich people favor the policy, its probability of passage goes up. On the other hand, the 10^th percentile line is flat, indicating that the opinions of the poor are unrelated to the outcome. The bottom chart compares the rich with the middle class (the 50^th percentile). Unlike the poor, the middle class appear to have some influence, but of course not as much as the rich.

Why do the views of the rich carry more weight? Maybe they're more likely to vote, more likely to contact their Senators, or more knowledgable about current events. The surveys Bartels used asked participants to state whether they had voted or contacted their Senators. It also included a measure of political knowledge. Since all three of these measures were positively related to income, they were all associated with greater consistency between the respondent's views and those of the Senators. However, statistically controlling for turnout, contact and political knowledge reduced the difference between the apparent influence of the rich and poor by only 24%.

Unfortunately, the survey did not ask participants whether they had made political contributions. Looking at other data on campaign contributions by income level collected at that time, Bartels estimated that if the Senators had based their decision only on contributions, they would have given six times (600%) more weight to the views of the rich than the middle class and almost no weight to the poor. The actual disparity in weight between the rich and the middle class (50%) was not as great as the differences in contributions would have predicted.

I'm bothered by the fact that in these studies the "rich" are defined as either the top third of the income distribution (Bartels) or the 90^th percentile (Gilens). These subgroups include some people who might be considered upper middle class. It would be interesting to know how consistent the opinions of the top 1% are with those of the politicians. Gilens data seem to imply that as wealth increases, agreement also increases. Is there any upper limit to this effect?

Of course, these data are mostly from the 1980s and 1990s.  Over time, both the absolute amounts and percentages of campaign contributions coming from the rich have increased. This is probably especially true since the 2010 Citizens United decision, which allows unlimited contributions by corporations and the rich. But since the decision also allows these contributions to be anonymous, their impact will be difficult to measure.

Those who believe the U. S. political system is a plutocracy rather than a democracy will find these data to be at least consistent with their theories, particularly on economic issues, although the middle class's opinions are given almost as much weight as those of the rich when the issue is of little economic importance. The poor, however, have been effectively disenfranchised when their opinions differ from those of the rich. Given the secrecy with which political decisions are made, it will be difficult to find conclusive proof of quid pro quo corruption.