Voting, Pleasure, and the Brain:
In response to Jim's argument that people vote because they find it pleasurable, my co-blogger Ilya writes:
Applying this idea to voting, it suggests to me that Jim may be right about why people vote even if Ilya is right that people don't like to wait in line and fill out forms. When people think about voting in the abstract, they focus on the rush of it; the feeling of participating, of taking responsibility, and the excitement of not knowing who is going to win. Sure, they don't like to wait in line and fill out forms. But when they decide to vote they aren't thinking about that, just like they aren't thinking about what a pain it is to go to Vegas when the trip is six months away. And because voting is a repeated activity, the far-away vision tends to dominate the near-term vision. Looking back on it, people are glad that they voted in past elections because they remember the rush and the feeling of responsibility; the length of the line and the time filling out forms is quickly forgotten.
Obviously this doesn't explain all of why people vote (or don't), but I think it suggests that the question isn't answered simply by a measure of objective costs and benefits; how the brain imagines future events seems to play an important role.
I am skeptical about Jim's suggestion that the benefit voters get from casting a ballot is like " like going to a movie or a football game." Movies and football games are entertaining and fun (at least to fans). Voting is not. Very few people regularly choose to stand in line or fill out forms as a leisure activity.I wonder if the insights from Daniel Gilbert's terrific book, Stumbling on Happiness, might be helpful here. Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard, points out that our brains measure happiness differently when dealing with events that are far away in time as compared to events that are near in time. When an event is far away, we tend to ignore the practical consequences of it and instead latch on to a very incomplete vision of what the event may be like. So if a co-worker says, "do you want to go to Vegas with me 6 months from now?," you might be happy to accept because the abstract mental image of going to Vegas seems great. It's not until the trip is around the corner that you realize that the trip will be expensive, you have other things to do, you don't necessarily want to spend time with your co-worker, and the like.
Applying this idea to voting, it suggests to me that Jim may be right about why people vote even if Ilya is right that people don't like to wait in line and fill out forms. When people think about voting in the abstract, they focus on the rush of it; the feeling of participating, of taking responsibility, and the excitement of not knowing who is going to win. Sure, they don't like to wait in line and fill out forms. But when they decide to vote they aren't thinking about that, just like they aren't thinking about what a pain it is to go to Vegas when the trip is six months away. And because voting is a repeated activity, the far-away vision tends to dominate the near-term vision. Looking back on it, people are glad that they voted in past elections because they remember the rush and the feeling of responsibility; the length of the line and the time filling out forms is quickly forgotten.
Obviously this doesn't explain all of why people vote (or don't), but I think it suggests that the question isn't answered simply by a measure of objective costs and benefits; how the brain imagines future events seems to play an important role.
Pencil-and-paper role-playing games involve a good deal of filling in forms.
Not to mention that lots of people vote is things like American Idol and players selection for All-Star games.
Ilya's theory doesn't apply well in these cases, I don't think the selection of a player to the all star game will yield benefit for many other Americans, and I don't think my single vote for the player will likely make a difference in the outcome.
2. I recognize that this isn't fair, but that we need a system that allows everyone to decide.
3. I recognize that our system, by giving everyone one vote in the decision, is basically fair.
4. So I recognize I'm not getting any more power than that.
5. I want to use all the power I'm given.
6. I recognize that if I don't vote, I've managed to adopt a self-destructive and impotent philosophy that allows southern evangelicals to tell me and people like me what to do.
7. Standing in line isn't that bad.
8. So I vote.
These are a purely personal and subjective reasons, but they likely play significant roles in the decision to vote or not. In fact, we often hear griping rights negatively invoked when someone complains about a political outcome: "If you didn't vote, don't gripe about whoever was elected."
Bragging rights are slightly different, and are often invoked as a way to become one-up in political discussions. One can say "don't blame me, I voted for XYZ".
Stephen Potter laid the groundwork for such analysis over fifty years ago in his groundbreaking work Gamesmanship.
I'm shocked, utterly shocked, that no academics have extended Potter's work into analysis of voting behavior.
We began, it seems, by noting an apparent contradiction between the cost-benefit ratio of voting and people's actual actions. That contradiction should spur a search for the true cost-benefits, not to claim that people are "irrational". And the true costs and benefits, like all cost and benefits, are subjective.
If, e.g., voting for candidate X has an expected effect on my net welfare over the course of my life of 5 utils and a cost of 3 utils, then I will vote. And included in that calculation is going to be the costs and benefits of my perceptions about how to behave. If not voting will induce guilty at 3 utils, that goes into the thinking. If voting will grant self-satisfaction of 2 utils, in it goes. Those costs and benefits should not be separated out ex ante -- except possibly because they are harder to measure (and so separating them out, and figuring an estimated difference between the other cost and benefits and the rough sum of all costs and benefits, is one way to measure them).
Of course it's been a couple of months and won't be for a day, but my fuzzy impression is that even when I am voting I am glad I am enjoying doing it. (Must read the whole series to understand why I'm enjoying.)
It's part of the social fabric.
Last week I went trick-or-treating with my kids. They scored well enough, but for what I could have earned in that hour I could have bought them a lot more candy and all good stuff. But it's a social process: speak at least five words to the neighbors at least once a year. (I had to remind my eldest to put her mask on -- she's less into costumes now, but that's also part of the process.)
I occasionally spend some time in a house of worship. I don't think my prayers are heard any better there than elsewhere (epecially if I'm attending the house of worship of members of a different faith) but again the face time builds community.
And my vote does count. I'm typically 25% of the Libertarian voters in my precinct.
The physical discomfort just made it an even bigger deal. It's a mistake to think that people only like easy, painless things. There are times when a little bit of communal suffering can be very satisfying.
Try imagining a future event without using your brain. It's hard!
Looking back on it, people are glad that they voted in past elections because they remember the rush and the feeling of responsibility; the length of the line and the time filling out forms is quickly forgotten. Obviously this doesn't explain all of why people vote (or don't), but I think it suggests that the question isn't answered simply by a measure of objective costs and benefits; how the brain imagines future events seems to play an important role.
For some reason, I'm thinking this is very similar to planning a wedding!
Try imagining a future event with just your brain: it's impossible!
The point is that the brain is here a necessary but not sufficient condition in the envisioning of future events.
Please see, by way of further explanation, Sunny Y. Auyang, Mind in Everyday Life and Cognitive Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), and M.R. Bennett and P.M.S. Hacker, Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003).
I'm making the rather robust assumption that the mind is not reducible to the brain, let alone identical to it.
Broadly, identifying oneself as a certain 'kind' of person means campaigns framed along divisions can capture or repel according to self-idnetification; and voting is then rewarded by a shot of self-affirmation for being the 'right kind of person'.
The effect of reciprocity, liking and scarcity triggers can also be factored in; eg the scarcity and reactance triggers for RKBA single-issue voting.
Balanced overall benefit assessments and altruistic benefits are generally too poorly communicated to allow people to buy into them.