The Psychology Of Voting
For many, voting is a civic duty. However, in the United States, there is a large contingent of people who don’t vote, even in presidential elections. Voting can be particularly low in midterm elections—where the number of nonvoters often exceeds voters. Political psychology researchers have been studying what encourages voting behavior, hoping to create interventions that might increase voting in the general public. “Because voting is a prosocial behavior, the kinds of things that should stimulate other types of prosocial behavior should have similar impacts on voting,” says Costas Panagopoulos of Northeastern University....