Do Implicit Attitudes Predict Actual Voting Behavior Particularly for Undecided Voters?

Malte Friese,Brian A. Nosek,Thomas Plischke,Colin Tucker Smith,Matthias Bluemke,Frank Krueger

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0044130

Abstract

The prediction of voting behavior of undecided voters poses a challenge to psychologists and pollsters. Recently, researchers argued that implicit attitudes would predict voting behavior particularly for undecided voters whereas explicit attitudes would predict voting behavior particularly for decided voters. We tested this assumption in two studies in two countries with distinct political systems in the context of real political elections. Results revealed that (a) explicit attitudes predicted voting behavior better than implicit attitudes for both decided and undecided voters, and (b) implicit attitudes predicted voting behavior better for decided than undecided voters. We propose that greater elaboration of attitudes produces stronger convergence between implicit and explicit attitudes resulting in better predictive validity of both, and less incremental validity of implicit over explicit attitudes for the prediction of voting behavior. However, greater incremental predictive validity of implicit over explicit attitudes may be associated with less elaboration.

Highlights

Reporting an intention to perform a behavior is an excellent predictor of performing that behavior [1]
Participants who completed more than 10% of their trials in less than 300 ms (0.14%) or with more than 25% (0.96%) errors in the Implicit Association Test (IAT) were excluded from data analyses, leading to a final sample of 3594 voters (303 undecided, 8.4%)
Participants who completed more than 10% of their trials in less than 300 ms (0.0% in the case of the political camps IAT, 0.32% in the case of the candidates IAT, 0.36% in the case of the postelection political camps IAT) or more than 25% errors in one of the IATs (4.69% in the case of the political camps IAT, 0.33% in the case of the candidates IAT, and 2.4% in the case of the postelection political camps IAT) were excluded from the respective analyses

Summary

Introduction

Reporting an intention to perform a behavior is an excellent predictor of performing that behavior [1]. As a consequence, reported behavioral intentions are central measurement for survey research applications. A large research literature provides evidence that behavior intentions can fail to predict behavior [2,3] – for extinguishing undesired behaviors (e.g., smoking) or initiating desired ones (e.g., exercise). As yet, little knowledge about the opposite situation – how to predict behavior when the respondent is unwilling or unable to report a behavioral intention in the first place?. Predicting the voting behavior of these ‘undecided’ voters has been an unsolved challenge for pollsters and psychologists for many years [4]. Because undecided voters can remain a sizable fraction of voters even days prior to the election [5] they often disrupt the accuracy of polls for predicting election outcomes. How can psychologists and pollsters predict the voting behavior of undecided voters?

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion