Cognitive dissonance, political participation, and changes in policy preferences

IF 2.5 2区经济学 Q2 ECONOMICS Journal of Economic Psychology Pub Date : 2024-10-17 DOI:10.1016/j.joep.2024.102774

Tanja Artiga González , Francesco Capozza , Georg D. Granic

引用次数: 0

Abstract

We investigate how participation in the electoral process can causally change policy preferences drawing on the framework of cognitive dissonance theory. We present an innovative experimental design, which allows us to isolate the net effect of cognitive dissonance on preference changes. Our results suggest that cognitive dissonance created by expressing support for a losing candidate causally led participants to align their policy preferences with that of the supported candidate more closely. Our results, however, also uncovered a strong dependency of such preference changes on the outcome of the election. When supported candidates won the election, no preference change was observed. Our results may be an indication that previous studies overestimated the cognitive dissonance effect on preference changes.

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认知失调、政治参与和政策偏好的变化

我们以认知失调理论为框架，研究了参与选举过程如何因果性地改变政策偏好。我们提出了一种创新的实验设计，使我们能够分离出认知失调对偏好变化的净影响。我们的结果表明，对落选候选人表示支持所产生的认知失调会使参与者的政策偏好与支持的候选人的政策偏好更加一致。然而，我们的结果也揭示了这种偏好变化对选举结果的强烈依赖性。当支持的候选人在选举中获胜时，没有观察到任何偏好变化。我们的结果可能表明，以往的研究高估了认知失调对偏好变化的影响。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Economic Psychology Multiple-

CiteScore

5.20

自引率

31.40%

发文量

审稿时长

63 days

期刊介绍： The Journal aims to present research that will improve understanding of behavioral, in particular psychological, aspects of economic phenomena and processes. The Journal seeks to be a channel for the increased interest in using behavioral science methods for the study of economic behavior, and so to contribute to better solutions of societal problems, by stimulating new approaches and new theorizing about economic affairs. Economic psychology as a discipline studies the psychological mechanisms that underlie economic behavior. It deals with preferences, judgments, choices, economic interaction, and factors influencing these, as well as the consequences of judgements and decisions for economic processes and phenomena. This includes the impact of economic institutions upon human behavior and well-being. Studies in economic psychology may relate to different levels of aggregation, from the household and the individual consumer to the macro level of whole nations. Economic behavior in connection with inflation, unemployment, taxation, economic development, as well as consumer information and economic behavior in the market place are thus among the fields of interest. The journal also encourages submissions dealing with social interaction in economic contexts, like bargaining, negotiation, or group decision-making. The Journal of Economic Psychology contains: (a) novel reports of empirical (including: experimental) research on economic behavior; (b) replications studies; (c) assessments of the state of the art in economic psychology; (d) articles providing a theoretical perspective or a frame of reference for the study of economic behavior; (e) articles explaining the implications of theoretical developments for practical applications; (f) book reviews; (g) announcements of meetings, conferences and seminars.