Optimism about Elections: Dissonance Reduction at the Ballot Box

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.This field experiment investigated the effects of the act of voting itself on voters' attitudes in the 1984 presidential election. The subjects were 139 voters who were interviewed either on entering or immediately on departing the polling place. They responded to questions concerning the chances of their candidates being elected president, the outcome of the presidential vote locally, their perceived closeness to their candidates on the issues, and to a nonpolitical question (concerning the beauty of the fall foliage) designed to detect any generalized mood changes as a result of voting. The results showed that people were significantly more confident of their candidates' chances after voting than before, even controlling for any generalized optimism (p < .02). Voting for a presidential candidate had an effect only on expectations concerning the outcome of the race for the presidency, and not on seemingly related questions. The experiment replicates and clarifies previous findings on the effects of post-decision dissonance on attitudes in natural settings.

Sources of Bias in Voter Expectations under Proportional Representation

“…"Wishful thinking" leads people to overestimate support for their favorite party and has been noticed in elections in the United States and elsewhere (Lazarsfeld et al ., 1944;Granberg and Brent, 1983;Granberg and Holmberg, 1988;Regan and Kilduff, 1988;Blais, 2002). Irwin and Van Holsteyn (2002) found that supporters of two parties whose performance would exceed the predictions of the polls were, consequently, more accurate in their predictions, while supporters of a party that did worse than the polls predicted appeared to be the most wishful.…”

Cognitive Dissonance and Post‐Decision Attitude Change in Six Presidential Elections

“…For example, Frenkel and Doob (1976) recorded more favorable assessments and greater optimism concerning the electoral success of a preferred candidate among a sample of post-vote individuals compared to a similar sample queried prior to voting. Likewise, Regan and Kilduff (1988) interviewed voters entering and leaving polling locations during the 1984 presidential contest and found that voting raised assessments of the likelihood of victory for the favored candidate. In this fashion, the effect of behavioral commitment, independent of knowledge of the election outcome, has been shown to influence candidate evaluations.…”

Citizen Forecasts of the 2008U.S. Presidential Election

“…There is mixed evidence that WT is exacerbated by partisan intensity (Dolan and Holbrook ; Granberg and Brent ; Levine and Roberts ) and reduced by knowledge (Babad ; Dolan and Holbrook ; Sjöberg ). However, the act of voting is found to increase WT bias (Frenkel and Doob ; Regan and Kilduff ).…”