People taking surveys treat hypothetical situations differently than they do real situations

What is it about?

People taking survey experiments act differently when they respond to hypothetical situations than when they respond to real ones. This means that these experiments may not reflect the real world very well. I show this is true with a simple survey experiment on public opinion on military intervention. They think about casualties in the real world but not in a fictional scenario. This means some of our research may have problems with validity.

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Why is it important?

My findings have large implications for many survey experiments in political science and international relations. There are some major problems that we might not be paying attention to.