NOVEMBER 2006
School, Church, Firehouse: Where You Vote Can Affect How
by Victoria Chang
Whether they vote in a school, church, home, or fire station may subtly influence how voters cast their ballots, according to new research by a marketing team at the Business School.
“The influence of polling location on voting found in our research would be more than enough to change the outcome of a close election,” says S. Christian Wheeler, associate professor of marketing, who conducted the study with doctoral candidates Jonah Berger and Marc Meredith. “Voting at a school could increase support for school spending or voting at a church could decrease support for stem cell initiatives,” Wheeler says.
Why might polling location influence voting behavior? “Environmental cues, such as objects or places, can activate related constructs within individuals,” Berger says. “Voting in a school, for example, could activate the part of a person’s identity that cares about kids, or norms about taking care of the community. Similarly, voting in a church could activate norms of following church doctrine. Such effects may even occur outside an individual’s awareness.”
Using data from Arizona’s 2000 general election, the three found that 55 percent of people who voted in schools supported Proposition 301, a measure to raise the sales tax to fund education, compared to 53 percent who voted in other types of locations. Analysis of other measures on the ballot that had nothing to do with schools showed no similar pattern.
The researchers followed up with a lab experiment where they randomly assigned voters to see pictures of different voting environments. Participants were shown 10 images from well-maintained schools (e.g. lockers, classrooms) or churches (e.g. pews, alters), plus five additional filler images of generic buildings. A control group was shown images of generic buildings.
They then voted on initiatives including California’s 2004 stem cell funding measure and Arizona’s education initiative.
Results from the second study showed that participants were less likely to support the stem cell initiative if they were shown church images than if they were shown school or generic building images. The subjects also were more likely to support the education initiative if they were shown school images versus church or generic building images.
“What our research suggests is that it might be useful to further investigate influences such as polling location to better understand how such factors affect different types of voting situations,” Wheeler says. “From a policy perspective, the hope is that a voting location assignment could be less arbitrary and more determined in order to avoid undue biases in the future,” says Wheeler.
For a longer version of this article, see www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/pubpolicy_wheeler_pollinglocation.shtml.
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Additional Reading
Can Where People Vote Influence How They Vote? The Influence of Polling Location Type on Voting Behavior
Jonah Berger, Marc Meredith, and S. Christian Wheeler
GSB Research Paper #1926, February 2006.
Idea Habitats: How the Prevalence of Environmental Cues Influences the
Success of Ideas
Jonah Berger and Chip Heath
Cognitive Science,
2005
Material Priming: The Influence of Mundane Physical Objects on
Situational Construal and Competitive Behavioral Choice
A.C. Kay, S.C.
Wheeler, J.A. Bargh, and L.D. Ross
Organizational Behavior and Human
Decisions Processes, 2004