Voting and Environmental Cues

Jeff Heuer — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 14:08:24 +0000

New research from the Stanford Graduate School of Business suggests that the physical location of a poll can significantly influence voter behavior. Analyzing data from Arizona’s 2000 general election, researchers found that those who had to go to a school to place their vote were significantly more likely to support a proposition to raise taxes to provide more education funding. The effect was visible even after controlling for political, demographic, and geographic factors. In follow-up laboratory studies, people were randomly shown images before being asked to vote on a mock ballot proposal. Those who were shown images of well-maintained schools were more likely to support increases in education funding, while those who were shown images of churches were more likely to vote against allowing stem cell research.

Why might something like polling location influence voting behavior? “Environmental cues, such as objects or places, can activate related constructs within individuals and influence the way they behave,” says Berger. “Voting in a school, for example, could activate the part of a person’s identity that cares about kids, or norms about taking care of the community. Similarly, voting in a church could activate norms of following church doctrine. Such effects may even occur outside an individual’s awareness.”

What is the significance of these findings?

“We want factors like political views—whether someone thinks a candidate is going to make our country a better place—to sway elections,” said [Jonah] Berger. “But in forming election policy, we also want to make sure that arbitrary factors such as polling location don’t ultimately influence voting behaviors.”

Via Mahalanobis

Micromotives » stanford

Voting and Environmental Cues