Implementation Intentions,Information, and Voter Turnout: An Experimental Study

Are citizens more likely to vote when they are asked to make plans about how they will cast their ballots? Such planning—typically described as “implementation intentions”—has been shown to increase many types of desirable behaviors, including exercising and healthy eating, receiving vaccinations, physical rehabilitation, and recycling. Important earlier work in political science suggests voter turnout can also be influenced by implementation intention interventions, whereby electors are prompted to “make a plan” to vote (Nickerson & Rogers, 2010 ), though this finding has gone largely unreplicated. At the same time, elections management bodies (EMBs) in many contexts regularly conduct informational campaigns in the period leading up to elections, though little is known about the effects of such efforts upon turnout. Using data from an online experiment conducted at the time of the 2015 Canadian Federal Election, we demonstrate that implementation intention interventions can improve voter turnout but that this effect is conditional upon electors being exposed to informational materials about how to vote in the election. When survey respondents were provided with information on voting requirements and methods, and then prompted with questions forcing them to contemplate the act of casting their ballots, we observe a sizable increase in turnout rates.     

Do Subtle Linguistic Interventions Priming a Social Identity as a Voter Have Outsized Effects on Voter Turnout? Evidence From a New Replication Experiment

An ongoing debate in political psychology is about whether small wording differences have outsized behavioral effects. A leading example is whether subtle linguistic cues embedded in voter mobilization messages dramatically increase turnout. An initial study analyzing two small‐scale field experiments argued that describing someone as a voter (noun) instead of one who votes (verb) increases turnout rates 11 to 14 points because the noun activates a person's social identity as a voter. A subsequent study analyzing a large‐scale field experiment challenged this claim and found no effect. But questions about the initial claim's domain of applicability persist. The subsequent study may not have reproduced the conditions necessary for the psychological phenomenon to occur, specifically the electoral contexts were not competitive or important enough for the social identity to matter. To address the first of these critiques, as well as other potential explanations for different results between the first two studies, we conduct a large‐scale replication field experiment. We find no evidence that this minor wording change increases turnout levels. This research provides new evidence that the strategy of invoking the self does not appear to consistently increase turnout and calls into question whether subtle linguistic cues have outsized behavioral effects.     

The Differential Effects of Stress on Voter Turnout

While everyone deals with stressful situations on a daily basis, individuals have different behavioral reactions to that stress. We argue that life stress also affects individuals’ political behavior, but this effect is contingent on their past political involvement. While individuals familiar with and engaged in the political process are unaffected when confronted with stress in life, individuals who are not routinely involved in the electoral process are more likely to disengage from politics. To test the differential effects of stress on the likelihood of political involvement, we fielded two experiments, one preceding the U.S. presidential election of 2012 and the second preceding the 2013 municipal election in a small Midwestern American town. We find that when triggered to consider life stressors unrelated to politics, individuals without a history of past participation in politics are less likely to vote while individuals who are habitual voters are unaffected.     

Beyond Total Effects: Exploring the Interplay of Personality and Attitudes in Affecting Turnout in the 2009 German Federal Election

This article addresses the role of personality traits in shaping electoral participation. Utilizing data from a survey conducted after the 2009 German federal election, we demonstrate that agreeableness and emotional stability increase electoral participation. Yet, the main contribution of this article is to link personality traits to attitudinal predictors of turnout. First, we demonstrate that attitudinal variables, including party identification, civic duty, political interest, and internal and external efficacy, serve as intervening variables that mediate the impact of personality on turnout. Second, we show that personality traits exhibit conditioning effects by increasing or decreasing the impact of attitudinal factors on electoral participation. By and large, the evidence suggests that openness, agreeableness, and extraversion render attitudes (somewhat) less powerful in affecting turnout while conscientiousness and emotional stability increase the impact of certain attitudes. Third, we put indirect and conditioning effects together and find that emotional stability and conscientiousness exhibit particularly interesting patterns of effects: They shape attitudes in a way conducive to higher turnout and make these attitudes more powerful in affecting voter participation.     

Self-Prophecy Effects and Voter Turnout: An Experimental Replication

Psychological research has found that being asked to predict one's future actions can bring about subsequent behavior consistent with the prediction but different from what would have occurred had no prediction been made. In a 1987 study, Greenwald, Carnot, Beach, and Young induced an increase in voting behavior by means of such a "self-prophecy" effect: Undergraduates who were asked to predict whether they would vote in an upcoming election were substantially more likely to go to the polls than those who had not been asked for a prediction. This paper reports on a replication of the Greenwald study conducted among a larger group of respondents more representative of the American electorate. No evidence was found that self-prophecy effects increase voter turnout.     

Reexamining the Calculus of Voting

This study applies social cognitive theory to the study of voter turnout, examining the effects of self‐efficacy on citizens' decisions of whether or not to vote. Consistent with recent arguments in cognitive psychology ( Fenton‐O'Creevy, Nicholson, Soane, & Willman, 2003, 2005 ), I argue that excessive perceptions of self‐efficacy lead some citizens to overestimate their vote's impact in close elections and to vote as a consequence of these perceptions. This illusion of control is further engendered by the features of skill‐based activities such as choice, personal involvement, stimulus familiarity, and exertion of effort ( Langer, 1975 ) that are inherent in the act of voting. Employing both cross‐sectional and panel data, I find that individuals with high levels of self‐efficacy are more likely to be moved to vote by perceptions that an election will be close than are citizens with low levels of self‐efficacy.     

These Eyes: A Rejoinder to Panagopoulos on Eyespots and Voter Mobilization

Get‐out‐the‐vote mailers using explicit social pressure consistently increase electoral turnout; however, they often generate a negative reaction or backlash. One approach to increase turnout, yet alleviate backlash, may be to use implicit social pressure. An implicit social pressure technique that has shown promise is to display a set of eyes. Researchers contend eyes generate a feeling of being watched, which cues subjects to act in more prosocial ways to demonstrate compliance with social norms. Several studies support this argument, including two voter mobilization studies. The technique has not been widely tested, however, in the political context. In five randomized field experiments, we test the impact on turnout of mobilization mailers using eye displays. We extend previous research by testing for differences in effects between male and female eyes and across political cultures. The effects are substantively and statistically weak at best and inconsistent with previous findings.     

Inside the Black Box of Negative Campaign Effects: Three Reasons Why Negative Campaigns Mobilize

The debate over the effect of negative campaigns on vote turnout has not been settled. At present, studies demonstrating a mobilization effect seem to have the upper hand. However, neither side has offered a compelling theory of the causal mechanisms that connect negative campaigns and voter turnout. This paper identifies three mechanisms of voter motivation—republican duty, candidate threat, and perceived closeness of the election—and tests the influence of negative ads on each. The findings suggest that each works to plausibly translate exposure to negative advertisement into increased participation.