Anchor-proofness in Voting

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Fioravanti, Federico, Terzopoulou, Zoi
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Fioravanti, Federico
Terzopoulou, Zoi
author_facet Fioravanti, Federico
Terzopoulou, Zoi
contents This work contributes to a foundational question in economic theory: how do individual-level cognitive biases interact with collective choice mechanisms? We study a setting where voters hold intrinsic preference rankings over a set of alternatives but cast approval ballots to determine the collective outcome. The ballots are shaped by an anchoring bias: alternatives are presented sequentially by a social planner, and a voter approves an alternative if and only if it is acceptable and strictly preferred to all alternatives previously encountered. We first analyze which approval-based voting rules are anchor-proof, in the sense that they always select the same winner regardless of the presentation order. We show that this requirement is extremely demanding: only very restrictive rules satisfy it. We then turn to the potential influence of the social planner. On the upside, when the planner has no information about the voters' intrinsic preferences, she cannot manipulate the outcome.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_04494
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Anchor-proofness in Voting
Fioravanti, Federico
Terzopoulou, Zoi
Theoretical Economics
This work contributes to a foundational question in economic theory: how do individual-level cognitive biases interact with collective choice mechanisms? We study a setting where voters hold intrinsic preference rankings over a set of alternatives but cast approval ballots to determine the collective outcome. The ballots are shaped by an anchoring bias: alternatives are presented sequentially by a social planner, and a voter approves an alternative if and only if it is acceptable and strictly preferred to all alternatives previously encountered. We first analyze which approval-based voting rules are anchor-proof, in the sense that they always select the same winner regardless of the presentation order. We show that this requirement is extremely demanding: only very restrictive rules satisfy it. We then turn to the potential influence of the social planner. On the upside, when the planner has no information about the voters' intrinsic preferences, she cannot manipulate the outcome.
title Anchor-proofness in Voting
topic Theoretical Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.04494