Research Record: A Sociocultural Approach to Voting: Construing Voting as a Duty to Others Predicts Political Interest and Engagement
Jul 23 2024
By
Tom Durso
Source
Princeton School of Public and International Affairs
Princeton SPIA’s Research Record series highlights the vast scholarly achievements of our faculty members, whose expertise extends beyond the classroom and into everyday life.
If you’d like your work considered for future editions of Research Record, click here and select “research project.”
The Details
Authors: Hannah Waldfogel, post-doctoral research associate, Kahneman-Treisman Center for Behavioral Science and Public Policy
Title: A sociocultural approach to voting: Construing voting as a duty to others predicts political interest and engagement
Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 121, No. 22
The Big Picture
Waldfogel and her coauthors set out to understand whether and which U.S. citizens feel a stronger duty to vote if they see voting as interdependent – that is, as a duty to others – or as independent – that is, as a duty to themselves. Their results suggest that interpreting voting as a duty to others – as interdependent – is associated with increases in perceived voting duty and interest, and, in turn, political engagement intentions.
The Findings
“These results suggest that one strategy to boost perceived voting duty, and in turn, voter turnout, may be to simply emphasize interdependence in get-out-the-vote messaging," Waldfogel says. “Our work also suggests that this strategy may be particularly effective among individuals from working-class contexts, who tend to vote at lower rates than those from middle-class contexts.”