To Vote or Not to Vote?
According to the U.S. Elections project, 49.2% of the eligible voting population cast a ballot last November, marking the highest recorded turnout for a U.S. midterm election since 1914.[1] Yet, despite this recent peak, the United States still has an abysmally low turnout record compared to the rest of the democratic world. While only 58% of eligible voters participated in the 2016 U.S., other developed nations saw significantly higher turnout in recent national elections. In France, for example, 67.9% of the voting-age population participated in the most recent national election, and in South Korea, 77.9% participated in the 2017 national elections.[2] So, what can we civically-minded individuals do to increase turnout? Well, behavioral economics offers some answers. By understanding the psychology of decision-making, candidates and politically engaged individuals can design more effective messages to get constituents and friends out to vote.
What is Framing?
Traditional economic theory assumes people are perfectly rational, making fully-informed choices across different environments in order to maximize expected utility. However, a host of psychologically-informed research on decision-making — and, perhaps, our own intuition — dispels this model of homo economicus. Rather, our decisions are subject to any number of cognitive and environmental limitations.
One foundational example of such a limitation is that how information is framed plays an outsized role on our perception of that information (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979).[3] Building on their earlier model of prospect theory — which, as detailed below, demonstrated the relative value that people place on losses and gains, and their preferences for risky behavior over both — Kahneman and Tversky went on to show that the same question could elicit very different responses depending on whether it is framed with a focus on losses or gains.
Consider the following example: in one famous study, participants chose between two different programs designed to treat 600 people affected by a deadly disease. Treatment A was predicted to save 200 people, whereas treatment B predicted a 33% chance that everyone would be saved and a 66% chance that nobody would be saved. One group of participants was presented with the two treatments framed positively, i.e. how many people would be saved, and a second group was presented with those same treatments framed negatively, i.e. how many people would die. Interestingly, although the groups were presented with logically equivalent options, A was chosen by 72% of participants when it was presented positively (“saves 200 lives”) dropping to only 22% when the same choice was presented negatively (“400 people will die”).[4] Put simply, people demonstrate inconsistent preferences regarding the same outcome depending on how that outcome is framed.
References
[1] : Bach, Natasha. “Americans Turned Out to Vote in the Midterms at a Level Not Seen in More Than a Century.” Fortune. Last modified November 14, 2018. https://fortune.com/2018/11/14/voter-turnout-highest-level-since-1914
[2] Haltiwanger, John. “US Voter Turnout Was Way Up in the 2018 Midterms, but It Still Lags Behind Most Developed Countries’.” Business Insider. Last modified November 13, 2018. https://www.businessinsider.com/us-voter-turnout-way-up-in-2018-midterms-but-still-low-globally-2018-11
[3] Kahneman, Daniel, and Amos Tversky. “Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk.” In Handbook of the fundamentals of financial decision making: Part I, pp. 99-127. 2013.
[4] Tversky, Amos, and Daniel Kahneman. “The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice.” science 211, no. 4481 (1981): 453-458.
[5] Rothman, Alexander J., Roger D. Bartels, Jhon Wlaschin, and Peter Salovey. “The strategic use of gain-and loss-framed messages to promote healthy behavior: How theory can inform practice.” Journal of communication 56, no. suppl_1 (2006): S202-S220.
[6] Banks, Sara M., Peter Salovey, Susan Greener, Alexander J. Rothman, Anne Moyer, John Beauvais, and Elissa Epel. “The effects of message framing on mammography utilization.” Health psychology 14, no. 2 (1995): 178.
[7] Rothman, Alexander J., Roger D. Bartels, Jhon Wlaschin, and Peter Salovey. “The strategic use of gain-and loss-framed messages to promote healthy behavior: How theory can inform practice.” Journal of communication 56, no. suppl_1 (2006): S202-S220.
[8] Detweiler, Jerusha B., Brian T. Bedell, Peter Salovey, Emily Pronin, and Alexander J. Rothman. “Message framing and sunscreen use: gain-framed messages motivate beach-goers.” Health Psychology 18, no. 2 (1999): 189.
[9]. “Poll: Non-Voters Cite “Corrupt System” As Reason for Opting Out – Suffolk University.” Suffolk University in Boston – Suffolk University. Last modified April 23, 2018. https://www.suffolk.edu/news/76774.php#.Wt4Hy9PwbBI
About the Author
Pooja Salhotra
Pooja received her bachelor’s degree from Yale University, where she studied psychology and economics and conducted behavioral economics research in the Yale Decision Neuroscience Lab. Pooja is fascinated by cognitive biases in decision-making, particularly in those decisions that impact social justice and economic equality. Pooja is currently a J.D. candidate at Harvard Law School, and she is interested in exploring how public policy can be used as a tool to help individuals and groups make decisions that ultimately improve social welfare.
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