Three randomized experiments found that subtle linguistic cues have the power to increase voting and related behavior. The phrasing of survey items was varied to frame voting either as the enactment of a personal identity (e.g., "being a voter") or as simply a behavior (e.g., "voting"). As predicted, the personal-identity phrasing significantly increased interest in registering to vote (experim...

Taking inspiration from Glick and colleagues (2004), this study tested the idea that resentment of paternalism (which is part of the hostile sexism toward men construct) might approximate desire for system change by correlating this variable with actual behavior associated with system change in a single culture. Specifically, voting behavior in the 2008 U.S. presidential election was predicted ...

We study experimentally how taxpayers choose between an income tax and a commodity tax to fund a public good. We find that voters support the income-tax regime, although they would earn higher payoffs in the alternative commodity-tax regime. We discuss and evaluate empirically alternative behavioral accounts to explain voting behavior. We find that inequality aversion and efficiency concerns ma...

Federal standards require that electronic voting machines log information about the voting system behavior to support post-election audits and investigations. Our study examines interface issues commonly reported in touchscreen voting systems (miscalibration, insensitivity, etc.) and the voter interaction data that can be collected to allow investigation of these issues while at the same time p...

Undecided voters represent a major challenge to political pollsters. Recently, political psychologists have proposed the use of implicit association tests (IAT) to measure implicit attitudes toward political parties and candidates and predict voting behavior of undecided voters. A number of studies have shown that both implicit and explicit (i.e., self-reported) attitudes contribute to the pred...

The behavior of voting for a party in an election has important social implications, yet, due to strong mentalistic influences in electoral research, it has rarely been studied from the behavior analytical perspective. In this article a behavioral analysis of voting is presented and a derived behavioral model is empirically tested on data from a Dutch election survey. It is concluded that such ...

Understanding the political consequences of digitalization is among key challenges for modern societies. A pressing issue question whether online activities make individuals more close-minded and less willing to consider alternative arguments. We examine this using a peculiarity Swiss electoral system – possibility split votes as behavioral outcome measure. argue that might either likely (“echo...

We report on an experiment comparing compulsory and voluntary voting institutions. Rational choice theory predicts sharp differences in voter behavior between these two institutions. If voting is compulsory, then voters may find it rational to vote insincerely, i.e., against their private information. If voting is voluntary so that abstention is allowed, then sincere voting in accordance with a...

Title of Document: THE DYNAMICS OF POLITICAL PARTICIPATION: AN ANALYSIS OF THE DYNAMIC INTERACTION BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS AND THEIR POLITICAL MICRO-ENVIRONMENT Stephen Wendel, Ph.D., 2012 Directed By: Professor Joe Oppenheimer, Department of Government and Politics While political choices are rarely isolated or simultaneous, the vast majority of empirical models in political science assume they ar...

We study a Condorcet jury model where voters are driven by instrumental as well as expressive motives. We show that arbitrarily small amounts of expressive motives significantly affect equilibrium behavior and the optimal size of voting bodies. Increasing the size of voting bodies always reduces accuracy over some region. Unless conflict between expressive and instrumental preferences is very l...