The Psychology of Voting

NY Times: voting has benefits beyond getting your candidate elected…

“It may be a form of identity construction for individuals,” Dr. Gailmard wrote in an e-mail message. “Or it could be a duty to do the right thing, or a social norm.”

Sounds postmodern. I buy it. Voting maintenances a narrative of individuality and informs our sense of who we are.

Casting a ballot clearly provides a value far higher than its political impact. The benefit may include side payments — say, the barbecues and camaraderie of a campaign, or the tiny possibility that a single vote may be decisive.

But recent research suggests that it has more to do with civic duty and the maintenance of moral self-image. In a series of experiments, researchers from Northwestern University and the University of California, Berkeley, have had study participants play a simple election game involving monetary rewards. A group of designated voters cast their vote for Choice A, an equal distribution of money among voters and nonvoters in the study; or B, a payout to be split only among the designated voters — a smaller group, so a higher amount. It cost money to vote, and participants could abstain at no cost.

The study authors, led by Sean Gailmard at Berkeley, called Choice A “ethical” and Choice B “selfish.” They found that ethical voting ran highest, at about 20 percent, when individual votes were least likely to affect the outcome. Selfish voting ran highest, also about 20 percent, when individuals’ choices were most likely to change the outcome.

This finding could explain why people might vote against a local tax increase but for a Congressional candidate who was likely to raise their income taxes: their vote carries far less value in a national race than in a local one.

This has got me thinking about voting for Obama.

If voting plays a role in identity construction, could Obama being on the ballot be helping us reconstruct our sense of who we are as individuals?

In the same way that this study showed that we are more likely to vote for people who look like us, I wonder if there is a pull effect on a symbolic level as well.

Could we be more likely to try and identify with people that we vote for – potentially moving us into new territory where we can construct our identities?

I feel like you could argue that this is an effect of Obama getting elected…he’s helping us to reconstruct our own identities as Americans, on an individual level.