I really enjoy the nuts and bolts articles you all put out on polling. I really enjoy how an observation in the art of polling underscores a broader sociological point about behavioral differences between men and women that begs followups and discussion of implications.
For example, in my corporate life I've noticed a bit of a gender split between upstream functions (marketing, R&D) which tend to be more heavily female, and downstream functions (supply chain, sales) which tend to be more heavily male. Upstream you want a bit more "interesting, I don't know. We should investigate that" while downstream it's much more "we need a decision in the next twenty minutes or we miss a massive order", both of which align with the observations in your polling data. Cool!
I co-authored an article about "don't know" responses to political knowledge questions: https://johnbullock.org/DK/DK.pdf. We didn't say much about gender in that article, but the data were revealing. Among other things, they showed that women's "don't know" responses to political knowledge questions conceal some knowledge: sometimes, women who say that they "don't know" probably do know. By contrast, my co-author and I found no "hidden knowledge" among men that they were concealing through "don't know" responses.
But those weren't the most important findings. More important, by far, was the finding that—for both men and women—"don't know" responses usually reflect a true lack of knowledge. Prompting people who say "don't know" to give a substantive response may be wise, but entirely eliminating the option to respond "don't know" would be a great mistake.
My article and this comment apply to questions that get at people's knowledge of politics. I am agnostic about how the findings extend to questions about attitudes or values.
This is so interesting and makes a lot of sense! And one of the phenomena I find very interesting here is, while college at this point is more female than male, there still seems to be a rather strong implicit stereotype of “men more are logical/intellectual tha an women” (a stereotype I disagree btw)
I wonder a good chunk of it is the intersection of this difference in disposition and the culture that values confidence (sometimes overconfidence lol). Like my impression as someone who did not grow up in this culture, there seems to be a strong expectation that “for anyone to be considered intellectual, you’re supposed to have opinions about everything”
I find this very interesting bc this misogynistic stereotype of “men are smarter than women” def exists in Japan, where I grew up but our so called *top* colleges are overall more male than female, which makes the cognitive dissonance a bit lower.
(FWIW, I don’t endorse the view that male are smarter than female in Japan and that’s reflected in this gender balance)
The point is really that self-reporting may not accurately capture knowledge. We know women are more likely to say "I don't know" (i.e. self-report). It's useful to talk about why — and how it creates or inflates the perception of a gap in knowledge.
You should read the article more carefully. It doesn’t at all do what you seem to be accusing it of doing.
In any case, “trust” or “not trust” is not a useful dichotomy. We know what people are saying on these surveys, and that suggests several possible hypotheses about what people are actually thinking. We shouldn’t just accept that what people say is true, but we also shouldn’t ignore what people say. And when there are systematic differences in what different groups are saying, there must be something that explains that difference, whether it’s a greater acceptance of fallibility, or a greater interest in privacy, or actually a difference in knowledge.
You know, I actually canceled my subscription because I’m not here to argue. Glad you’ll have an opportunity for recognition on having typed all that out though. Have a great day!
I work in public opinion polling and use of forced choice questions is always a bit interesting. You want to avoid people guessing, but you don't want people to hide their true opinion behind a "don't know" response. I'd expect a lot of people to say they don't know about an obscure foreign policy decision, but if the question is "Would you support the US military firebombing your parents' neighborhood?", it's not reasonable to think that someone would "not know" how they felt about that.
I really enjoy the nuts and bolts articles you all put out on polling. I really enjoy how an observation in the art of polling underscores a broader sociological point about behavioral differences between men and women that begs followups and discussion of implications.
For example, in my corporate life I've noticed a bit of a gender split between upstream functions (marketing, R&D) which tend to be more heavily female, and downstream functions (supply chain, sales) which tend to be more heavily male. Upstream you want a bit more "interesting, I don't know. We should investigate that" while downstream it's much more "we need a decision in the next twenty minutes or we miss a massive order", both of which align with the observations in your polling data. Cool!
I co-authored an article about "don't know" responses to political knowledge questions: https://johnbullock.org/DK/DK.pdf. We didn't say much about gender in that article, but the data were revealing. Among other things, they showed that women's "don't know" responses to political knowledge questions conceal some knowledge: sometimes, women who say that they "don't know" probably do know. By contrast, my co-author and I found no "hidden knowledge" among men that they were concealing through "don't know" responses.
But those weren't the most important findings. More important, by far, was the finding that—for both men and women—"don't know" responses usually reflect a true lack of knowledge. Prompting people who say "don't know" to give a substantive response may be wise, but entirely eliminating the option to respond "don't know" would be a great mistake.
My article and this comment apply to questions that get at people's knowledge of politics. I am agnostic about how the findings extend to questions about attitudes or values.
This is so interesting and makes a lot of sense! And one of the phenomena I find very interesting here is, while college at this point is more female than male, there still seems to be a rather strong implicit stereotype of “men more are logical/intellectual tha an women” (a stereotype I disagree btw)
I wonder a good chunk of it is the intersection of this difference in disposition and the culture that values confidence (sometimes overconfidence lol). Like my impression as someone who did not grow up in this culture, there seems to be a strong expectation that “for anyone to be considered intellectual, you’re supposed to have opinions about everything”
I find this very interesting bc this misogynistic stereotype of “men are smarter than women” def exists in Japan, where I grew up but our so called *top* colleges are overall more male than female, which makes the cognitive dissonance a bit lower.
(FWIW, I don’t endorse the view that male are smarter than female in Japan and that’s reflected in this gender balance)
I thought we weren’t supposed to trust self reporting? I guess we can when it’s women saying they don’t know things, huh.
The point is really that self-reporting may not accurately capture knowledge. We know women are more likely to say "I don't know" (i.e. self-report). It's useful to talk about why — and how it creates or inflates the perception of a gap in knowledge.
You should read the article more carefully. It doesn’t at all do what you seem to be accusing it of doing.
In any case, “trust” or “not trust” is not a useful dichotomy. We know what people are saying on these surveys, and that suggests several possible hypotheses about what people are actually thinking. We shouldn’t just accept that what people say is true, but we also shouldn’t ignore what people say. And when there are systematic differences in what different groups are saying, there must be something that explains that difference, whether it’s a greater acceptance of fallibility, or a greater interest in privacy, or actually a difference in knowledge.
You know, I actually canceled my subscription because I’m not here to argue. Glad you’ll have an opportunity for recognition on having typed all that out though. Have a great day!
It’s a coping mechanism for being incapable of apologizing
I work in public opinion polling and use of forced choice questions is always a bit interesting. You want to avoid people guessing, but you don't want people to hide their true opinion behind a "don't know" response. I'd expect a lot of people to say they don't know about an obscure foreign policy decision, but if the question is "Would you support the US military firebombing your parents' neighborhood?", it's not reasonable to think that someone would "not know" how they felt about that.