Democracy v Psychology: why people keep electing idiots | Dean Burnett

The 2015 election campaigns are under way, and it’s clear that doing or saying unintelligent things are no barrier to political success. Unfortunately, there are several psychological mechanisms that lead to apparent idiots being elected into powerful positions. Politicians. Their reputation is very poor. In fairness, this is largely their own fault, but it would be foolish to assume every politician is like this. If they were, the whole infrastructure would collapse before you could say “ca