Raising Hope: Hope Inducement and Voter Turnout

• Published in: Basic and applied social psychology Vol. 36; no. 6; pp. 494 - 501
• Main Author: Panagopoulos, Costas
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Philadelphia, PA Taylor & Francis Group 02.11.2014; Taylor & Francis; Psychology Press
• Subjects: Behavior. Attitude; Biological and medical sciences; Citizen Participation; Electoral College; Emotions; Experiments; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Political Campaigns; Political science; Politicians; Psychologists; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Social psychology; Voter behavior; Voter Turnout; Voting Behavior; Human; Political attitude; Politician; Social behavior; Social interaction; Hope hopelessness
• ISSN: 0197-3533; 1532-4834
• DOI: 10.1080/01973533.2014.958228

Politicians routinely invoke hope on the campaign trail, presumably because they believe that inducements of hope attract supporters and impel citizens to the polls. Social psychologists and political scientists similarly posit that activating positive emotions like hope and other powerful psychological mechanisms has the capacity to stimulate prosocial behavior, like voting in elections. In this study, I subject these claims to empirical scrutiny by designing and implementing a series of randomized field experiments to examine whether inducing hope raises electoral participation. Overall, I find little evidence that hope affects voting behavior, but I acknowledge the null effects may reflect the [im]potency of the treatment.