Identity Beats Policy When It Comes To Voter Choices
New theory says social identity is a key driver of voter choice
Duke University
October 18, 2016
https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...1018195635.htm
As if you weren't feeling this already, new research says that
two motivations --
your policy positions and
your social identity -- are
competing to shape which candidate you will choose
or whether you will vote at all.
Policy positions are a rational way to decide: pick a president whose policies align more closely with your own.
Social identity, on the other hand, is
what your vote means for your own self-image and how others see you.
Political science researchers have generated many theories about voter choice.
Most of them assume voters choose rationally, while others acknowledge the role of identity. But none had proposed that rational choice and identity might actually
compete to determine voter choice...
..."We think that treating
identity as something that
competes with
policy helps explain why voters often select candidates
whose policies go against their own interests," said senior investigator Scott Huettel, chair of psychology and neuroscience at Duke....
..."People often think about what their vote says about themselves, how it makes them feel as a person, what it says about them to their friends and colleagues," said Huettel, who is a member of the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences....
...The group's new model might explain some
paradoxical voter choices in real-life examples, among them:
To Vote Or Not To Vote
For
some people, the act of voting itself is
primarily about identity --
not about the direct personal benefits of a vote, Huettel said. The chance that an individual's vote will have an impact on the presidential election is slim-to-none in most cases, because of the sheer number of people who vote and because of how the Electoral College system is set up.
But if you cringe after reading that fact, you're not alone.
The act of voting carries a strong sense of identity, which is reinforced by the
social media streams we wade in on a daily basis.
"People are deciding to vote
not because their vote has a material effect on their future, but
because the act of voting signals something to themselves and others," Huettel said.
This adds to a political science theory called "expressive voting," which reasons that people have non-rational motives for voting. "In our model, we are specifying that these expressive votes are
motivated by identity," Jenke said....