The Psychology of Voting Behavior:

A literature review on electoral decision-making factors and processes

Submitted by

Gabriela Victoria A. Timbancaya

2011-57215

to

Dr. Ma. Cecilia Gastardo-Conaco

in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for Psychology 180: Social Psychology

08 December 2014

The Psychology of Voting Behavior:

A literature review on electoral decision-making factors and processes

There is in place a very hierarchical power structure in every country that is mandated to

govern, that is to make and enact rules and policies that are for the betterment of the welfare of

the general populace. Every few years, there is one day in which ordinary citizens, with no

distinction in class, gender, or race, take part in establishing the people in power for the next

political term. They can reinstate an incumbent or they can elect a newcomer. The assumption of

elections is that those who win the majority vote are in the best position to lead the country. Of

course, the unfortunate reality is that even in large numbers, we are still often unable to make

sound judgments as to who should take up the cudgels of the government. More often than not,

we spend the years of the subsequent term groveling about the performance of the people whom

we had supported fervently in the weeks leading up to the casting of the vote.

To have a better grasp over why this happens to us over and over again, to increase

(however marginally) our chances of making the right choice next time, and to begin opening the

eyes of the rest of our fellow citizens, we must take a close look at electoral behavior. From the

rationale of voting to the models that try to explain how we make our decisions in terms of

certain factors, we will look at the dynamics of the social and the psychological and examine

how they interplay with each other to determine the names we write on the ballots we cast. At

the end of this paper, we shall also examine electoral behavior in the Philippine context.

Why do we vote?

Before we look at how we vote, we must look at why we vote in the first place. Here, we

discuss rational choice theory, voting as a habit, and voting as self-expression.

We vote because it is the rational thing to do

According to Anthony Downs’ rational choice theory outlined in his book An Economic

Theory of Democracy (1957), we make a cost-benefit analysis of whether to vote or not. As

rational actors, we try to maximize utility. This analysis is laid out in an equation:

R = (B)(P) – C + D

where R represents the total reward a person gets from voting, B is the benefit expected to accrue

from the desired outcome (i.e., the person’s candidate actually wins), P is the person’s belief that

his vote will be decisive in the election, C is the personal cost entailed by voting, and D is the

psychological satisfaction the person gets from the act of voting. If a person is rational, which is

assumed by the theory, the more positive the value of R is, the more likely he is to vote (as cited

in Hardner & Krosnick, 2008).

Conventional rational choice wisdom dictates that since the probability that one’s vote

will be decisive in the election is infinitesimal, the value of R in any large-scale election should

be negative, and no one should want to even bother voting. This is because out of millions of

voters, there is very little chance that one person’s vote will change the outcome. Even the

closest races have a margin of a few hundred or thousand votes. One must weigh this tiny

possibility against the real and tangible costs of voting, which includes but is not limited to the

time spent lining up to register as a voter, the money for obtaining forms and documents required

for voting, the opportunity cost in terms of time, money and effort from searching for and

processing information relevant to one’s selection of candidates, and the hassle of the actual

voting process.

Voter turnout is never 100%, but it is much, much higher than rational choice theory

would predict using the aforementioned analysis. Are we then irrational in choosing to vote?

Well, the short answer is no. There is a way to account for this, by modifying the rational

choice theory slightly to include a social motivation for voting. Rational choice models often

have the assumption that a voter operates on selfish preferences. But voting can be rational in

cases where the person cares about other people when he votes, in which case he employs social

preferences. Here B, or the benefit expected to accrue, is constituted by the formula

B = Bself + aNBsoc

where the Bself is the expected benefit to the self, a is a discounting factor to represent the ration

of Bsoc to Bself, N is represented by the number of people in the population to be affected, and

Bsoc is the expected benefit to the population. In this case, N is extremely large, enough to offset

the very low P, because the entire population (N) is always bigger than the number of those who

vote, which is the inverse of P (Edlin, Gelman, & Kaplan, 2008).

Citing data from the 2001 British Election Study (University of Essex 2002), Edlin et al.

(2008) share that 25% of respondents voted to get ‘benefits for me and my family’ while 66%

voted to get ‘benefits for groups that people care about like pensioners and the disabled’. The

social-benefit model of rational choice theory posits that people make vote choices based on

social goods and not selfish benefits. It seeks to answer the question of why people still vote

even when it seems like the trouble of voting is not worth it. For selfish voters, the higher the

turnout, the less benefit they get from voting. In large elections, voting is not worth it. As for

social voters, they incur a benefit no matter what the turnout is (Edlin et al., 2008).

We vote out of habit

Voting once increases the probability that a person will vote again. According to Melton

(2014), there are two levels of explanation for this. The first is that voting once makes it less

costly to vote in the future because institutional barriers are eased (Melton, 2014). Fewer

requirements are needed to register again, and a person has a better understanding of how the

process of registration and voting works, so there is less cost in terms of seeking information on

which offices to go to, what documents to get, how to locate one’s polling station, even how to

fill out the ballot and cast the vote.

The second explains habitual voting on a psychological level. Voting influences people to

think of themselves more as voters, and to think of the act of voting as “something that people

like me do on election day”. By turning out, they increase their feelings of civic-mindedness and

thereby modify their political orientation towards the specific behavior of voting (Melton, 2014).

We vote to express ourselves

People go to great lengths to present themselves as a certain kind of person. Image

management is usually associated with social media, because on such platforms we post pictures

and statuses that we believe are consistent with our identity or the identity we want to project.

However, self-expression goes further than Instagram posts, Starbucks shots, selfies, and the

like. Self-expression also happens in the precincts.

We are motivated to behave in ways that affirm our identity with a group, experiencing

cognitive dissonance when we act in ways that are inconsistent with our attitudes. The very act

of voting, as well as the candidate or party we vote for, may serve as a signal to ourselves and to

others about who we are as citizens of a country (Rogers, Fox, & Gerber, 2012). If we think that

voting is an act that responsible and concerned citizens engage in, and being a good citizen is an

important part of our identity, we will be motivated to participate and turn out on Election Day.

How do we decide our vote?

Numerous models have been constructed in the hopes of explaining why we vote the way

we do. There are three main schools of thought, namely the sociological or Columbia model, the

psychological or Michigan model, and the rational choice or Downsian model. Here we shall

look at the three, and discuss one other model, the heuristic-systematic model, which uses

psychological mechanisms to explain electoral behavior.

The sociological model

Also called the Columbia model (after the university from whence came the researchers),

the sociological model of voting behavior was constructed with the intention of studying the

effect of media on voting choice. They had initially thought that decision-making would be

influenced most by personality and exposure to mass media, with emphasis on the latter.

Their findings, published in 1944 in their book The People’s Choice: How the Voter

Makes up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign, showed otherwise. It was the social groups they

belonged to that determined whom they decided to vote (Antunes, 2010; Rosema, 2004). These

groups are fairly homogenous and encourage political conformity (Bartels, 1996). It turns out

that voters are influenced mainly by their social characteristics, and some of these characteristics

are especially telling. Three were found to predict voters’ choices: socioeconomic status,

religious affiliation, and area of residence.

While The People’s Choice showed that certain social characteristics influenced voters,

Voting (1954) explained why this happens. Vote preferences come about because people interact

with those with whom they share political interests and social characteristics, and this arises from

three principles: first, people belong to different groups that have different interests (social

differentiation); second, people inherit political preferences from their families (transmission);

and third, people have frequent contact with people from the same social groups (social and

physical proximity) (Antunes, 2010; Rosema, 2004).

The researchers also found that the majority of voters stuck with their decision, with only

54 out of 600 subjects changing their vote over time. Apparently, election campaigns served

more to reinforce people’s commitments to their respective party affiliations than to convert

people from other political groups. The target audience of campaign propaganda is the same

group of people who are not likely to read or listen to it in the first place. Those who do pay

attention are the ones who are already convinced (Antunes, 2010).

While the Columbia studies paint the average partisan voter as simply being swept back

and forth by the forces of his social environment, the researchers do not describe independent

voters, those who do not have a definite vote until late into the elections, any more favorably.

They were just as influenced by social forces (e.g. the people they talked to on election day,

pressure from social groups) as those who had made their decisions from the beginning

(Antunes, 2010).

The psychological model

The trouble with the sociological model of voting was that it described the input (social

characteristics) and the output (voters’ choice) but left the process in between a mystery, a black

box (Rosema, 2004). Developed by scholars at the University of Michigan, this model was

presented in The American Voter (1960) by Campbell, Converse, Miller, and Stokes. The

psychological (or psychosocial) model concentrates on three motivational factors: partisanship or

party identification, issue orientation, and candidate orientation (Antunes, 2010; Rosema, 2004).

Partisanship in the psychological model is defined as a psychological affinity with a

political party that does not necessarily translate to behavior such as registration or consistent

voting (Antunes, 2010). It is determined not through the actual voting behavior of a person, but

his or her self-positioning in relation to the parties, i.e. which party they felt closer to. This is

acquired through socialization, much like how we acquire religion. It is a cognitive shortcut, a

heuristic, rather than a social identity.

The two other motivational factors seen to affect choice are issue orientation and

candidate orientation (Rosema, 2004). Issue orientation pertains to the extent to which

individuals agree or disagree with policies implemented by a certain party incumbent, which

would then reflect on the general stand of that party. Candidate orientation is, simply put, the

appeal of a candidate that comes from personal attributes.

These three factors are tied together into a decision-making mechanism called the funnel

of causality. A person is first influenced by his sociological environment, which determines his

partisanship (Antunes, 2010). This in turn influences the orientation he has towards issues and

candidates, and leads him to pay attention to certain information and to ignore or reject others. It

is this selective attention that leads to biases in receiving and processing information and

ultimately determines the vote.

The rational choice model

The rational choice model encompasses two decisions made during elections: whether to

vote or to abstain, and whom to vote, if one decides to vote. The first was discussed earlier in this

paper, and so what remains to be tackled is the latter.

When faced with two or more options, rational voters try to imagine scenarios in which

each party wins. They then proceed to compare these possible outcomes and decide their actions

from their personal appraisal of the differences between or among them. If the difference

between two parties is positive, then the vote will be cast in favor of the former. If it is negative,

it is the other party who will receive the vote. If the difference is 0, this means that the parties are

essentially the same. In this case, the voter will not gain anything by voting and is better off

abstaining (Antunes, 2010).

The heuristic-systematic model

The heuristic-systematic model is not among the three main schools of thought when it

comes to electoral studies. However, its use of and emphasis on psychological mechanisms

merits discussion alongside the Columbia, Michigan, and Downsian models of voting behavior.

Similar to the psychological model, the heuristic-systematic model involves a paring

down of choices from the full range of possible candidates down to one through a series of

stages. This model makes use of a two-step process in which a different processing style is used

for each stage, with the assumption that humans are satisficers and not optimizers, and this

process would reduce cognitive effort (Steenbergen, Hangartner, & de Vries, 2011).

The first stage is the consideration stage, in which voters narrow down the full range of

candidates to a preliminary choice set. In this stage, they rely on long-standing heuristics such as

partisanship and general ideology. The size of this choice set may be expanded if a voter is

indifferent, in which case the candidates all look the same, or if a voter is ambivalent, in which

case he cannot readily choose between the two using heuristic processing. Political interest and

knowledge may also play a role in determining the size of the choice set, although it is not

certain in which direction it would work: it may be that a person knows so much about the

candidates that he cannot easily choose among them, or that he knows enough that his analysis

comes as easily as a heuristic for a voter with average knowledge (Steenbergen et al., 2011).

The second stage is the choice stage, in which the choice set is narrowed down further to

one candidate. Here, voters use short-term cues such as information about specific, contemporary

issues to select their bet from the set of viable candidates with systematic and analytic reasoning

(Steenbergen et al., 2011).

What influences our vote?

The decision to vote is mediated by countless influences. Here we look at influences

under three categories: individual factors, the social environment, and the characteristics of the

election and the campaign.

Individual factors

Several factors make it more likely for us to turn out on Election Day. People with higher

educational attainment are likely to vote. This is believed to be because education increases the

sense of civic duty, and puts people in a context where voting is normative (Harder & Krosnick,

2008). According to Hillygus (2005), people who took more social science classes in college had

more civic duty and were also more likely to turn out on Election Day (as cited in Harder &

Krosnick, 2008). However, there is a social component to the effect of education on voting:

comparative educational attainment (relative to other people in one’s neighborhood) is a better

predictor of turnout than absolute educational attainment (Tenn, 2005, as cited in Harder &

Krosnick, 2008).

Wealthier people vote more, probably because people who are more financially stable are

more free to search for and process information for decision-making. People are also more likely

to vote as they get older, which may be because informational costs are lower because they know

more about the candidates and the intricacies of the bureaucracy involved in voting (Harder &

Krosnick, 2008). Being informed also increases the propensity to participate in the electoral

process (Lassen, 2005). All of these contribute to political self-efficacy, which influences the

decision to vote.

Personality also contributes to political self-efficacy. Openness and Extraversion have

been shown to have an association with political self-efficacy, and the latter is a significant

predictor of adult political participation (Vecchione & Caprara, 2008).

Personality is also linked to partisanship. Democrats and Independents have an external

locus of control while Republicans have an internal locus of control. Republicans are higher in

conscientiousness than Democrats, and Independents are somewhere in between the two on the

continuum (Sweetser, 2014).

Habit also plays a role in whether we vote and whom we vote for. We are more likely to

vote if we have voted in the past election (Melton, 2014), largely because we encounter fewer

institutional barriers to the process than during our first few elections. We also incur lower

informational cost by voting for the same party. In fact, Rosema (2004) cites the voting habit

heuristic, which says “vote for the party you always vote for (or did last time)” as one of six

heuristics voters use when deciding whom to vote.

Four of the other heuristics discussed by Rosema (2004) also originate in the individual.

First, there is the election outcome preference, which states: “Vote such, that what you want to

happen becomes more likely.” (p.78) The second is the incumbent approval heuristic, which is

summarized thus: “If you approve of the latest government, vote for them; if you disapprove,

vote for the opposition.” (p.78) The third and fourth are the party preference and candidate

preference heuristics, which simply direct people to vote for the party or candidate they like best

(Rosema, 2004). These heuristics, although contingent on outside events and people, ultimately

take their direction from the individual’s perceptions and valuations of these external factors.

Social environment

The family plays a large role in voting behavior. According to Lazarsfeld et al. in Voting

(1954) we inherit voting preferences from our family (as cited in Rosema 2004). Parents with

high socioeconomic status pass on their voting preferences to their children, owing to the indirect

effects of education, as well as the more direct effects of the political behaviors they learn and

the advantages they gain as a result of their social class (Plutzer, 2002).

Participation in civic organizations increases voter turnout. Engaging in cooperative work

with others motivates people to cast their vote. Middle-school involvement in certain student

organizations, particularly those with civic participation such as scouts, religious youth groups,

and non-school team sports, predicts whether people will vote in the first elections they are

eligible to participate in. The effect of scout groups is particularly robust, still remaining

significant after controlling for socioeconomic status and academic attainment (Frisco, Muller, &

Dodson, 2004).

The neighborhood context also influences one’s vote. As previously mentioned,

educational attainment comparative to one’s neighbors predicts whether one turns out. This may

be caused by social comparison that leads to feelings of being unusually qualified or unqualified

to vote, particularly when one feels that one has a different preference from everyone else

(Harder & Krosnick, 2008).

Both the sociological and psychosocial models of voting behavior explicitly recognize

the effect of one’s social groups in determining voting preferences. The power of social

messages in mobilizing voters in the age of the Internet was seen in an experiment involving 61

million people on Facebook. People in one treatment were given a social message at the top of

their news feeds in which they were encouraged to vote and click an “I Voted” button, given

information on polling places, and shown pictures of friends who had already clicked the button.

A second experimental treatment was shown an informational message in which they were also

informed about polling places and encouraged to vote and click the button, but were not shown

any pictures of friends who clicked the button. The social message was found to mobilize

significantly more people than the informational message, suggesting that real-life ties, which are

reflected in online friendships, play a significant role in voting behavior (Bond et al., 2012).

These real-life ties may be with family and close friends, but even co-workers with whom

we do not have close relationships are significant contributors to our interpersonal discussion

networks (Beck, Dalton, Greene, & Huckfeldt, 2002). Related to this is the heuristic summarized

as “Vote for the party or candidate others say you should,” the sixth of the heuristics discussed

by Rosema (2004).

Certain issues also determine voting preferences along social categories such as religion

and gender. Abortion, for example, is a particularly polarizing issue. In the 2004 US presidential

elections, pro-life voters chose George W. Bush, while pro-choice people voted John Kerry

(Gibbs, 2005). Differences are also found across genders in terms of issue appreciation:

Kaufmann (2000) found that issues such as reproductive health, gender equality, and legal

protection for the LGBT are increasingly important determinants of partisanship (as cited in

Gibbs, 2005) for women. The same study found that women are more liberal than men when it

comes to these issues. Partisan women are also highly likely to cross party lines on election day

to support a female candidate from another party: Democratic women candidates facing male

Republican opponents benefit from the crossover support from female Republican party

members (Brians, 2005).

Election and campaign characteristics

Institutional barriers to voting can impede our turnout. Motivation to vote increases as the

election nears, and early registration deadlines prevent people from registering at precisely the

time when they are most motivated to do so. The 1993 National Voter Registration Act in the

US, also known as the Motor Voter Act, lowered the institutional cost of voting by allowing

people to register for voting at the same time that they apply for or renew a driver’s licence, at all

offices that provide public assistance geared towards persons with disabilities, and by mail

(Harder & Krosnick, 2008).

Characteristics of the candidates may also influence voter preference. One salient factor

is physical appearance. Voters make trait inferences from facial features, and are likely to vote

for candidates that they perceive to be competent, competence being rated as the most important

attribute a politician should have (Hall, Goren, Chaiken, & Todorov, 2009). They also change

their valuations of physical characteristics across contexts: masculine features, which suggest

dominance, are more desired in a politician in times of war, while feminine features, to which

people attribute prosociality, are preferred in times of peace (Little, Burriss, Jones, & Roberts,

2007). Another candidate-related factor that affects voting preferences is incumbency. Incumbent

candidates have a strong advantage in races (Hall et al., 2009).

Negative campaigning can also affect mobilization. It stimulates problem awareness,

anxiety about candidates, and it makes people think that races are closer, and these factors

motivate people to turn out. However, negative campaigning might also stimulate other

psychological mechanisms (for example, it could undermine political self-efficacy) that would

impede other people from voting (Martin, 2004).

Voting: is it more fun in the Philippines?

It is evident that in the Philippines there is unity of showbiz and state. Many celebrities

have crossed over from the entertainment industry into politics. A quick listing of the names of

some of the politicians we have can very well be read as the cast for an upcoming star-studded

movie: Joseph Estrada, Vilma Santos, Lucy Torres-Gomez, Aga Muhlach, Bong Revilla, Lito

Lapid, etc. This phenomenon of electing famous personalities who usually do not have any

experience whatsoever in managing any level of a country is perennially bewailed by netizens

every election, and yet it continues to happen every time. It cannot be accounted for by any of

the models on electoral behavior we have outlined thus far, and necessitates additional

explanation.

What makes the Philippine political context conducive for crossing over from the

celebrity sphere? We find that celebrities are usually film heroes or hosts of social documentary

programs. They play roles with pro-masa narratives. Joseph Estrada, as an example, cultivated a

Robin Hood image with his roles in Asiong Salonga (1961) and Geron Busabos (1964). He used

this same image in his political campaign with the slogan “Erap para sa Mahirap” (Erap for the

Poor), and proceeded to win with six million votes more than his non-showbiz opponent Jose de

Venecia (Maniago, 2007).

Because show business is, of course, a business, this economic nature skews these

programs towards broadcasting messages of hope and service, because that is what people want

to hear. Through constant spectatorship, these celebrities gain airtime without having to bother

campaigning. The critical relationship of the celebrity and the viewer is established way before

campaign season (Maniago, 2007).

The Philippines has a weak political party system. Politicians often change sides, and

parties are virtually indistinguishable from each other on the level of principle and platform. This

leads voters to evaluate candidates based on other characteristics, such as personality and family

background. And here we touch on another phenomenon in the Philippines: kinship-based

politics. Kinship is especially important to the Philippine politician, as the structure of Philippine

society is largely based on family ties, which are valued highly. A candidate is always seen in the

context of his or her family (Maniago, 2007). This may in part explain why Corazon Aquino’s

death swept her son into power despite his lack of any political achievements in his track record

as a senator. This may also account for the tremendous support Grace Poe received, as her

campaign emphasized her being the daughter of Fernando Poe, Jr. (Although she did prove her

competence during her term, her popularity during the elections was boosted by her father’s

popularity among the masses.) A separate but related feature of Philippine politics is that

regionalism and language influences electoral behavior. Voters tend to prefer candidates from

their home province, and candidates who speak the same language (Montiel & Macapagal,

2000).

Voter turnout in the Philippines is generally higher than voter turnout in the United

States. The past two midterm elections in the Philippines, for example, saw a turnout of 60.70%

in 2013 and 63.68% in 2007. Turnout in US midterm elections was 41.59% and 47.52% in 2010

and 2006, respectively (as of this writing, no data is yet available for voter turnout in the 2014

US midterm election on the IDEA website). For presidential elections, in the Philippines it was

74.98% and 84.10% in 2010 and 2004, respectively, and 66.65% and 70.33% for 2012 and 2008,

respectively in the United States.

While it is a good thing that Filipinos are highly participative in elections, one must

consider that a large part of this turnout may be accounted for vote buying and patronage

politics. A lot of people may only be voting because they receive money after leaving the polls,

or because they stand to receive benefits for themselves and their family if a certain politician

wins (especially in local elections), and not because the candidate they voted for had political

platforms or principles that they perceive to be for the good of the country.

The Philippine context is riddled with cultural nuances that make it impossible to

understand electoral behavior within the framework of the models outlined in this paper. Much

more research is needed to closely examine the political dynamics of the country in terms of

psychological mechanisms.

Conclusion

Taken individually, these models of voting behavior leave much to be desired. The

sociological model leaves psychological mechanisms unknown in a black box. The

psychological model places emphasis on a person’s evaluations of candidates and parties without

elaborating the factors that change these evaluations and to what extent and in which direction

they are affected by external influences. The rational choice model assumes that voters are

rational, when in reality many of us are easily swayed by peripheral cues and social factors

instead of logical and analytical processes of decision-making. The heuristic-systematic model

makes space for heuristics, but its rigid two-step process does not account for multi-level

decision-making where heuristic processing and systematic processing are used several times,

and maybe even together, over several stages. When viewed together, these models may augment

each other in that the strengths of one can be used to cover up the weakness of another.

The factors affecting electoral behavior that were outlined here are by no means

exhaustive; there are far too many possible influences in the literature that it would be extremely

impractical to put them all in one paper. Even if we did, it would still not do much in the way of

helping us understand our own voting behavior as Filipinos. The influences of these factors were

studied and documented in the context of a different political climate, and for us to be better able

to understand the Philippines, we have to look at how these factors work on our own turf.

We obviously have no problem getting out to vote. Our turnout is relatively high, at least

compared to the United States where party lines are better defined and choices may seem more

distinct from each other. But our unsatisfactory track record of choosing the people who lead our

country still stands. To address this, we must raise political self-efficacy even more by keeping

the electorate informed and empowered. One way to do this is to reduce institutional barriers to

accessing information relevant to decision-making by forwarding the Freedom of Information

Bill. Another way we can improve our electoral choices is to control and reduce corruption,

which sustains and perpetuates vote-buying and patronage politics, practices that hinder us from

exercising our political will and our systematic processing. We must also continue to seek ways

to make it easier for people to vote by cutting up red tape and cleaning out the bureaucracy to

make it more efficient and less of a hassle to deal with. Finally, we should continue to study the

psychology behind social phenomena, so that we may reach a certain level of understanding of

these situations that will allow us to create solutions to the problems that we face as a nation.

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