How do voters react to information about aggregate turnout? Do high turnout levels mobilize or discourage citizens to vote? We argue that it depends on individuals’ degree of conformity

Conformity and Individuals’ Response to Information About Aggregate Turnout. André Blais, Rafael Hortala-Vallve. Political Behavior, February 1 2020. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-020-09595-5

Abstract: How do voters react to information about aggregate turnout? Do high turnout levels mobilize or discourage citizens to vote? We argue that it depends on individuals’ degree of conformity. We argue that in addition to the classic calculus of voting, conformist voters have an added incentive to ‘follow the pack’ and vote when turnout is high while abstain when turnout is low. We conduct two separate experiments, the first a survey experiment with a representative sample of the UK population and the second a lab experiment in Canada. Both studies confirm our hypothesis. These findings highlight the importance of taking individuals’ level of conformity into account when explaining their decision to vote or abstain.

Keywords: Conformity Turnout Survey experiment Lab experiment

Conclusion

Our research highlights the importance of including social conformity in the study of political phenomena. Recent research in political psychology has focused on the Big Five personality traits (see especially Mondak et al. 2010) but our study suggests that we should go beyond these personality traits. Politics is very much about collective decision-making, so there is an underlying tension between the desire for personal autonomy and the need for social norms that are respected and followed by everyone in the community. Citizens strike a different balance between these two considerations, and this is bound to shape their behavior.

We have combined a survey experiment conducted in Britain and a lab experiment performed in Canada to test our hypothesis. Both studies produced remarkably similar findings: in both instances, people who score higher on the social conformity scale are more prone to vote (abstain) when they know that most other people vote (abstain) while those who score low on the conformity scale have exactly the opposite reaction. If a predicted high turnout makes conformists more inclined to vote and if there are many conformists in the electorate, then a relatively high turnout would be an equilibrium.

The implications of our study hinge in good part of the distribution of individuals across the conformity scale in a given society at a given point in time. To the best of our knowledge there are no time-series or cross-section data about the distribution of conformity across societies or over time. The data that we have collected in Britain (see Fig. A1 in Online Appendix A1) suggest a relatively normal distribution, with the mean (7.52 on a 0 to 17 scale) indicating a slight majority of non-conformists. The point remains that, at least in our representative poll of British society, there are many people with conformist leanings.

We therefore end with a call for more attention to be paid to an individual’s social conformity. A huge literature exists in social psychology about the role of conformity, yet little research has been devoted to its impact in political life. Our study suggests that it is a crucial variable in the decision to vote or abstain. There are good reasons to believe that it shapes other political phenomena such as the decision to participate in demonstrations or to engage in strategic or bandwagon voting. It makes sense to assume that many people pay attention to information about what others in the community are likely to do when deciding whether to vote or abstain. Political scientists need to integrate such considerations into their models and analyses.

Our study also raises important questions about the relationship between social conformity and other factors that may affect voter turnout. One such question pertains to the relationship between social conformity and sense of civic duty. Are conformists more prone to believe that they have a moral obligation to vote? Are both attitudes shaped by personality traits? Another set of questions is about the relationship between social conformity and social pressure. We would expect conformists to pay attention to social pressure. But what kind of social pressure? In this study, we have examined how conformists react to information about aggregate turnout. But what happens when conformists are exposed to conflicting information, if/when for instance they learn that turnout in the country is going to be high but that most friends/relatives are going to abstain? These are big questions about which we have no clear answer.