One of my more intriguing employments in bygone years was as an exit poll taker in a contentious local election. The routine was to attempt to interview every other voter, and if the person did not want to participate, not to try and keep up a number by taking the next person, but always just approach every other one. I was paired with a young woman, who normally worked as a model at trade-shows and such, and was myself at the time a distance runner and lifted weights regularly. I mention this not from self-regard, but just to establish we presented the sort of appearance people generally do like to talk to.
Before we had been at it more than an hour or so, she and I could tell who would say yes and who would say no, before we asked. We were stationed some distance from the exit to the polling place, so that we got a good look before we were close enough to speak. They were different sorts of people, the ones who would answer and the ones who would not, and it was obvious to us. I could not tell you what it was about them that constituted that difference, but we could both sense it. So it seems to me there may be something unavoidable about a sort of sample bias, in that a different type of person answers and participates.
Nowadays, I expect the swamp that telephone service has become exacerbates this. I will not answer a number I do not recognize, because it is almost certain to be some form of scam attempt. If I do not know who you are, I do not want to talk to you, and will not. I doubt this is unusual, but it goes some way to ensure people who do pick up a call are different from me in temperament and outlook.
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