When voters like to be right: An analysis of the Condorcet Jury Theorem with mixed motives

Abstract We study the aggregation of private information through voting in committees where agents are rewarded based on both the correctness of the committee decision (instrumental payoffs) and the correctness of their vote (expressive payoffs). Surprisingly, we find that even when expressive payoffs are perfectly aligned with instrumental payoffs, expressive payoffs can prevent committees from aggregating private information, suggesting that committees will make better decisions if agents are not held individually responsible for the correctness of their vote. We show that this finding holds in situations with heterogeneous expressive payoffs and reputation payoffs that depend on the aggregate profile of votes.