The other day I came across a very clever ad that well exemplifies social pressure as a cause for people practicing the irrational behavior of voting. Please the 10-second video add a watch here.
This ad is powerful because it plays on human tribalistic tendencies of group association by creating two distinct groups: those who vote and thus care about the neighborhood and Larry who doesn't vote and thus does not care about the neighborhood. Larry is treated as an outcast being viewed with disdain for not performing the 'good group' behavior of voting. Furthermore when Larry attempts to defend himself by saying "but" he is cut off to neighborhood members judgementally shaking their heads at Larry
Larry could very well be practicing rational ignorance and not voting because voting is not a utility-maximizing activity to Larry. Larry could have trust that the collective will make a moderate choice due to the rational voter theorem. However, Larry may end up being pressured into voting as a result of ostracization from his neighbors and not because Larry truly finds value in the act of voting.
1 comment:
Robbie—nice post. It was perfectly logical and concise. I would like to extend this conversation by employing terms from Johnson's "Voting, Rational Abstention, and Rational Ignorance" piece used to quantify the rationality of voting (or not voting). As we learned, casting a vote may be viewed as rational provided that the marginal benefit of voting (B) times the probability that your vote is decisive (P) plus a multifaceted vote-inducing variable (D) are together greater than the cost of voting (C). In other words, a person will rationally vote if B*P + D > C. Aside from P, all of these variables may differ greatly among voters. Some folks have extremely high opportunity costs in taking the necessary steps to be able to vote. Others may place very little or a lot of value in B and D depending on where and who they are. In Larry's case, he is clearly in a position where B*P + D < C, so he makes the logical choice of not voting. The purpose of the ad linked in the original post is to induce Larry and fellow abstainers to vote by attempting to raise the value of each individual's D such that it plus B*P exceeds C. Efforts like these happen all the time at UVA during the election cycles; there are many student organizations that seek to increase students' D via social pressure and stressing the importance of voting as a civic duty. Throughout my time here, I have been asked if I am registered/have voted on dozens of occasions. In the end, it's not always clear whether a person will be persuaded enough to vote, but what is clear is that voter turnout will increase as the variable D does.
Post a Comment