Cognitive dissonance theory predicts that the act of voting makes people more positive toward the party or candidate they have voted for. Following Mullainathan and Washington (2009), I test this prediction by using exogenous variation in turnout provided by the voting age restriction. I improve on previous studies by investigating political attitudes, measured just before elections, when they are highly predictive of voting. In contrast to earlier studies I find no effect of voting on political attitudes. This result holds for a variety of political attitudes and for both Sweden and the United States.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Uppsala University, Department of Economics in its series Working Paper Series with number
2009:12.
Length: 25 pages Date of creation: 01 Jul 2009 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:hhs:uunewp:2009_012
Contact details of provider: Postal: Department of Economics, Uppsala University, P. O. Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden Phone: + 46 18 471 25 00 Fax: + 46 18 471 14 78 Email: Web page: http://www.nek.uu.se/ More information through EDIRC
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its listing, contact: (Katarina Grönvall).
Find related papers by JEL classification: B59 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Current Heterodox Approaches - - - Other C21 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: