Newswise — Adam Levine, professor of government at Cornell University and expert on political behavior, comments about recent research into what motivates lethargic voters to get to the polls, including a new effort by MoveOn.org to mail 12 million “voter report cards,” scoring individual participation in the last five elections and comparing it to the neighborhood average.
He says:
“We know from past work that, yes, social pressure is quite effective at increasing turnout. At the same time, many groups that organize get-out-the-vote drives are unwilling to use it because they are worried that it appears intimidating to voters. The next frontier in social pressure research is to examine subtler ways to induce social pressure.
“One way is to use faces in mailings. Some research has already been done looking at what happens if you include a face on a get-out-the-vote mailing, and it has some positive effects on turnout. Yet even the idea of using a face is unappealing to some groups.
“I am currently doing research that looks at even subtler ways to mimic social pressure, using three dots that are arranged in an upside-down triangle that triggers facial recognition in our brains without consciously appearing as a face. This research is being conducted in several battleground states this fall.”
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