Snippets FromThe World Of Psychology – October/November 2008
Pundits can not pick the economic and financial future. What about the forthcoming US elections? What are the people factors that may influence the outcome?
2008 US Elections – A time of change?
The important US elections will be held on Tuesday 4th November, with numerous ‘experts’ endeavouring to predict the outcome. The website http://www.iftheworldcouldvote.com reveals that Barack Obama has received 87% of the votes cast online (over 500,000 participants across 200 countries), yet it is important to consider the various factors and issues that may still influence the outcome.
Assuming we do not have another Florida ‘butterfly ballot’ voting paper fiasco, an Obama victory, with 54% to 57% of the popular vote, is predicted by several pundits using widely different methods. One of the methods uses an electronic market with ‘shares’, with Obama priced very recently at USD$0.564 according to the New Scientist. How much confidence can we place in a market-based scheme given recent global economic turmoil? Probably more than we think as fear, anxiety and greed probably do not enter the equation.
The Bradley Effect
One factor which has raised its head is the issue of race and in particular what is known as the Bradley effect. In the 1982 Californian election, African American, Tom Bradley, despite leading comfortably in the opinion polls, was beaten by a white candidate for the position of Governor. This discrepancy was attributed to the reluctance of voters to tell pollsters that they would not vote for a black man. In the recent Democratic primaries, Obama’s votes (versus Hilary Clinton) were 6% lower than anticipated in New Hampshire and California. However, it is likely that racial prejudices have softened since the 1980s, and during the 2008 Democratic primaries there was even evidence of a ‘reverse Bradley effect’. Furthermore, the Bradley effect, if it still exists, could be offset by the ‘cell phone’ effect. Consider this: nearly 20% of Americans are now unreachable by landlines and thus cannot be accessed legally on mobile phones for automated voice-response polling systems; young voters are more likely to support Obama (2:1); young voters are more likely to have a mobile phone but no landline. The PEW Research Center, using both mobile phones and landlines, believes that the Obama support is understated by 2% because of this phenomenon.
Social Psychology and People Perception
In January 2006, the Washington Post published an article bringing social psychology into the mix. Studies presented at a conference (Society for Personality and Social Psychology) “produced evidence that emotions and implicit assumptions often influence why people choose their political affiliations, and that partisans stubbornly discount any information that challenges their pre-existing beliefs.”
Using the Implicit Association Test, studies have found that most people find it more difficult to associate black faces with positive concepts than white faces (see https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/). This implicit bias was found to be higher in the congressional districts that produced more votes for Bush. Joe Krasnick, a psychologist and political scientist at Stanford University, stated that “we have fifty years of evidence that racial prejudice predicts voting. Republicans are supported by whites with prejudice against blacks.”
Other points to note:
§ We vote with our hearts, not with our minds – according to a 2007 book by Professor Drew Westen, “The political brain: The role of emotion in deciding the fate of a nation”. This research concludes that emotion centres of the brain, not the higher cortical areas, activate when people hear political messages.
§ Voting in the US is not compulsory, with a turnout of 60.7% in 2004 and only 54.3% in 2000. A report in the APA Monitor (June, 2008) quoted a Dr Laura Baker who stated, “The party you affiliate with seems culturally determined, but the degree to which you participate seems more genetically influenced.” Weather can also play a big part. Gomez, Hansford and Krause published a paper in the Journal of Politics (August, 2007), supporting the notion that rain significantly reduces voter participation. Moreover, poor weather is shown to benefit the Republican Party and the authors claim that the weather may have contributed to the outcome in two presidential elections, 1960 and 2000.
§ The National Science Foundation has designated USD$10M for the 2008 Annual National Election Studies, co-chaired by Dr John Krasnick of Stanford University, to investigate voting behaviour, impact of social networks and implicit attitudes to race and gender (see http://www.electionstudies.org/).
§ Not everyone believes in research and scientific enquiry. Dr Friedrich Funke of the University of Jena (Germany) posted on the Amazon.com politics forum requesting participation in a ten-minute web-based survey investigating the psychological background of voter behaviour. Unfortunately, the first reply was from an individual with a cynical comment that such research was to “better manipulate voters” and the next posting from someone stating “Why does a German care about American voting behaviour?” As Dr Funke has noted, the Democrat primaries race (between a white female and a black male) provided a rare opportunity to investigate a range of issues, particularly relating to gender and race-based stereotypes. If you wish to assist Dr Funke, visit ww3.unipark.de/uc/president/.