Do grades have absolute meaning? An experiment on majority judgment

Théo Delemazure, Roberto Brunetti (), Antoinette Baujard () and Sylvain Bouveret ()
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Théo Delemazure: UvA - Universiteit van Amsterdam = University of Amsterdam, ILLC - Institute for Logic, Language and Computation - UvA - Universiteit van Amsterdam
Roberto Brunetti: LEMMA - Laboratoire d'économie mathématique et de microéconomie appliquée - Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas, Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas
Antoinette Baujard: Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne, CNRS, Université Lumière Lyon 2, emlyon business school, GATE, 77 rue Michelet, 42100, Saint-Etienne, France, GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon - Saint-Etienne - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - UJM - Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Étienne - UJM EPE - Université Jean Monnet (EPSCPE) - EM - EMLyon Business School - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, UJM - Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Étienne - UJM EPE - Université Jean Monnet (EPSCPE)
Sylvain Bouveret: Grenoble INP - Institut polytechnique de Grenoble - Grenoble Institute of Technology - UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble INP ENSIMAG - École nationale supérieure d'informatique et de mathématiques appliquées - UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes - Grenoble INP - Institut polytechnique de Grenoble - Grenoble Institute of Technology - UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes, LIG - Laboratoire d'Informatique de Grenoble - Inria - Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes - Grenoble INP - Institut polytechnique de Grenoble - Grenoble Institute of Technology - UGA - Université Grenoble Alpes

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Abstract: Whether in education, performance reviews, or elections, grades serve as tools for assessment, yet the universality of their meanings remains an open question. When voting under majority judgment, voters assign verbal grades such as "excellent, very good, good, fairly good, acceptable, insufficient, to reject" to each candidate. The meaning of these grades should be clear and consistent across all voters. Balinski and Laraki (2011) describe this as a "common language" and claim that the grade labels convey absolute meaning. This paper tests the assumption of absolute meaning by examining whether the meaning of a grade depends on the grading scale (i.e., framing effect) in a political context. We conducted an online experiment (N = 1955) in which participants voted for candidates to the French presidential elections under majority judgment with grading scales with different numbers of grades. Our findings indicate that the grade distributions obtained by candidates are significantly influenced by the grading scales available to voters. Our data therefore rejects the assertion that grades convey absolute meaning, showing instead that their interpretation depends on the number of grades available.

Keywords: Online Experiment; Framing Effect; Ballot information; Majority Judgment; Voting behavior (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-06-10
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Published in Social Choice and Welfare, 2026, ⟨10.1007/s00355-026-01665-7⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-05664566

DOI: 10.1007/s00355-026-01665-7

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