Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-5g6vh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T08:28:40.282Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Voting behavior is unaffected by subtle linguistic cues: evidence from a psychologically authentic replication

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 November 2020

ALAN S. GERBER ,
GREGORY A. HUBER Open the ORCID record for GREGORY A. HUBER [Opens in a new window]  and
ALBERT H. FANG Open the ORCID record for ALBERT H. FANG [Opens in a new window]
ALAN S. GERBER
Affiliation:
Charles C. & Dorathea S. Dilley Professor of Political Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
GREGORY A. HUBER*
Affiliation:
Forst Family Professor of Political Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
ALBERT H. FANG
Affiliation:
Independent Scholar, New York, NY, USA
*
*Correspondence to: Forst Family Professor of Political Science, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA. Email: gregory.huber@yale.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Do small wording differences in message-based behavioral interventions have outsized effects on behavior? An influential initial study, examining this question in the domain of political behavior using two small-scale field experiments, argues that subtle linguistic cues in voter mobilization messages describing someone as a voter (noun) instead of one who votes (verb) dramatically increases turnout rates by activating a person's social identity as a voter. Two subsequent large-scale replication field experiments challenged this claim, finding no effect even in electorally competitive settings. However, these experiments may not have reproduced the psychological context needed to motivate behavioral change because they did not occur in highly competitive and highly salient electoral contexts. Addressing this major criticism, we conduct a large-scale, preregistered replication field experiment in the 2016 presidential election. We find no evidence that noun wording increases turnout compared to verb wording in this highly salient electoral context, even in competitive states.

Type
Article
Information
Behavioural Public Policy , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , April 2023 , pp. 380 - 394
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bryan, C.J., Walton, G.M. and Dweck, C.S. (2016), ‘Psychologically authentic versus inauthentic replication attempts’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 113(43): E6548.Google ScholarPubMed
Bryan, C.J., Walton, G.M., Rogers, T. and Dweck, C.S. (2011), ‘Motivating voter turnout by invoking the self’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108(31): 12653–12656.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gerber, A.S., Huber, G.A., Biggers, D.R. and Hendry, D.J. (2016), ‘A field experiment shows that subtle linguistic cues might not affect voter behavior’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 113(26): 7112–7117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerber, A.S., Huber, G.A. and Fang, A.H. (2018), ‘Do Subtle Linguistic Interventions Priming a Social Identity as a Voter Have Outsized Effects on Voter Turnout? Evidence from a New Replication Experiment’, Political Psychology, 39(4): 925–938.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Gerber et al. supplementary material

Gerber et al. supplementary material

Download Gerber et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 80.8 KB