The Moral High Ground: An Experimental Study of Spectator Impartiality
نویسنده
چکیده
Recent developments in various branches of political science underscore the importance of empirical investigation of impartial views. This paper proposes and tests an empirical model of impartiality, inspired by Adam Smith (1759), that is based on the moral judgments of informed third parties (or spectators). The model predicts that spectatorship produces properties widely considered desirable in both normative and descriptive political science research, namely, unbiasedness and consensus. This informs a vignette experiment that elicits moral judgments about real world political economy issues while varying the information conditions and roles of respondents (spectator and stakeholder) across treatments. The results indicate that spectator views are unbiased, and that relevant information reduces stakeholder bias to insignificance, whereas irrelevant information reduces bias but does not eliminate it. Relevant information also promotes a kind of consensus. I argue that this model can complement empirical and theoretical work on deliberation, public opinion and political behavior.
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