The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies - New Edition
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
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Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
People are systematically biased about controversial non-Moorean moral claims and issues.
“This is because people are systematically biased about controversial non-Moorean moral claims and issues.”
From Realism about Moral Deference (2025) · cites this paper as Caplan (2008)
Interesting moral beliefs about non-overlapping issues tend to converge in predictable ways due to rational irrationality.
“On Huemer's telling, interesting moral beliefs about non-overlapping issues tend to converge in predictable ways due to rational irrationality.”
From Realism about Moral Deference (2025) · cites this paper as Caplan (2008)
Our strong belief preferences (biases) about controversial moral matters frequently make it instrumentally rational for us to form interesting moral beliefs in epistemically irrational ways.
“According to this account of moral and political belief formation, popularized by Bryan Caplan (2008), our strong belief preferences (i.e., biases) about controversial moral matters frequently make it instrumentally rational for us to form interesting moral beliefs in epistemically irrational ways.”
From Realism about Moral Deference (2025) · cites this paper as Caplan (2008)
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Advancing Framing Theory: Designing an Equivalency Frame to Improve Political Information Processing
Shulman, H. C., & Sweitzer, M. D. (2018) · Human Communication Research · doi:10.1093/hcr/hqx006 · Cited by 47 · see citing works
Farley, R. M., & Southwestern Philosophical Society (2025) · Southwest Philosophy Review · doi:10.5840/swphilreview202541112
- Authors
- Caplan, B.
- Corresponding author
- Caplan, Bryan
- Venue
- Princeton University Press eBooks
- Publisher
- Princeton University Press
- Published
- 2008-12-31
- OpenAlex
- W3212960831
- Cited by
- 551
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 49 · 2025: 21 · 2024: 47 · 2023: 41 · 2022: 23 · 2021: 32 · 2020: 34 · 2019: 39 · 2018: 39 · 2017: 25 · 2016: 27 · 2015: 39 · 2014: 32 · 2013: 26 · 2012: 26
- FWCI
- 29.74
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Princeton University Press eBooks (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Game Theory and Voting Systems
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Political Theory and Democracy
- Keywords
- rational voters, voting behavior, vote choice
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
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