Government policies are often presented with hefty price tags but people often zone out as more zeros are added to the total cost According to a new study, rescaling the cost of programs can increase a person's understanding of funding choices, which could improve how people participate in the policy debate. In the July issue of the journal, the results can be found.
"When President Trump wanted to spend $10 billion on the border wall, conservatives were saying it was a great idea while liberals were saying why spend that much money on a wall," said Chapman. The author is Chapman. "This got our team thinking, and we asked how big is $10 billion, and how do people think about it?"
Humans are not very good at understanding numbers. Humans evolved to think in terms of smaller clusters, like how many berries are on the bush, and how many will be available the next day. Most people can't see numbers that scale beyond their experience. It's possible that this explains why people shut down when talking about big government programs.
Chapman and her colleagues studied the concept further. They wanted to know how rescaling information can improve our understanding.
There were four statements evaluated in the first study. Content presented on a total price per program was evaluated by participants. There were two pairs of statements that were scaled. When presented with the price per person option, the participants had an easier time differentiating between high and low cost.
"With a simple manipulation rescaling big numbers into smaller numbers, people can understand this information better," said Christina Boyce-Jacino, a post-doc with the Consortium of Universities of Washington Metropolitan Area and the U.S. Army Research Institute for Behavioral and Social Sciences. The author is the first one. Understanding numerical information can make a difference in citizenship.
The eight programs that were ranked in the second study had previously been presented with a price per program. The results show that participants were more successful at understanding the price per person. The team presented 399 participants with the same information but scaled the expenditures using a different unit. The price per person was found to offer more comprehension. The results suggest that people can digest more information if they rescale large numbers and 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609-.
We rescaled the information using an arbitrary unit and we still see the same effect. The people are better at discriminating.
The team presented 399 people with eight programs. The four pairs had the same characteristics. The other four had different program characteristics. The program price tag was presented as either price per program or price per person. When cost was presented in a price per person format, participants were more likely to pick the least expensive program.
The researchers were surprised at how the information scaled. They found that people were more sensitive to small numbers than to large ones even when the ratio was constant.
The ratio shows that numerical representation is more curved than a log function. It is in the same place as before, but it is different.
Chapman believes that this work could be expanded to facilitate public debate around other important topics, like public health.
Chapman said that people are bad at processing large numbers. To help people be good citizens and savvy evaluators of how tax dollars are spent, scale numbers that place them in range that people can appreciate.
More information: Large numbers cause magnitude neglect: The case of government expenditures, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2203037119 Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
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