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Regulatory Fit and Voting 1
Author(s) -
DOLINSKI DARIUSZ,
DROGOSZ MAREK
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2011.00841.x
Subject(s) - voting , regulatory focus theory , focus (optics) , turnout , disapproval voting , psychology , social psychology , group voting ticket , political science , bullet voting , cardinal voting systems , contingent vote , public relations , law , politics , physics , optics , creativity
The problem of many democracies is low voter turnout. One reason is the voting procedure, which only allows voting for a party or candidate. Introduction of voting against could bring more voters to the polls. The concept of regulatory focus (Higgins, 1998) suggests that people who focus on prevention would vote more eagerly if they are given the opportunity to blackball disliked candidates. This article describes 2 studies that verify this hypothesis. In the first study, over two thirds of participants declared that they would vote more willingly if they had a “for or against” choice at the election. The second study shows that the “pro or anti” formula is especially attractive to participants with a prevention regulatory focus.