In 1908 the Welsh neurologist and psychoanlayst Ernest Jones described human beings as rationalizers whose behavior is governed by "the necessity of providing an explanation." We construct a formal and testable model of rationalization in which a decision maker selects her preferred alternative...

We argue that large elections may exhibit a moral bias, i.e., conditional on the distribution of preferences within the electorate, alternatives understood by voters to be morally superior are more likely to win in large elections than in small ones. This bias can result from ethical expressive...