, Columnist
When Outrage Clouds Political Judgment, in U.K. and Beyond
The psychology of retribution explains why some Brits voted against their own interests.
A blind choice?
Photographer: Michael Tubi/Corbis via Getty Images)This article is for subscribers only.
Whether or not it was justified, Britain's vote to leave the European Union was rooted, in large part, in a widespread sense of outrage. To understand the underlying political psychology, and see how to respond to it, it’s important to know something about outrage in general.
A few years ago, Daniel Kahneman of Princeton, David Schkade of the University of San Diego and I teamed up to study how ordinary people think about punishment. We looked in particular at punitive damages, which juries award in the face of egregious misconduct -- say, when tobacco companies have hidden information about the health risks of smoking, or when a manufacturer has sold toys that it knows are dangerous to children.