Sticking with Your Vote: Cognitive Dissonance and Political Attitudes

Mullainathan, Sendhil; Washington, Ebonya

doi:10.1257/app.1.1.86

This setting lets you change the way you view articles. You can choose to have articles open in a dialog window, a new tab, or directly in the same window.

Open in Dialog
Open in New Tab
Open in same window

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics: Vol. 1 No. 1 (January 2009)

AEJ: Applied Volume. 1, Issue 1 | left

Previous Article Next Article right

Expand

Quick Tools:

Print Article Summary Email Link to this Article Export Citation
Sign up for Email Alerts Follow us on Twitter Subscription Information
(Institutional Administrator Access)

Explore:

AEJ: Applied - All Issues

AEJ: Applied Forthcoming Articles

Sticking with Your Vote: Cognitive Dissonance and Political Attitudes

Article Citation

Mullainathan, Sendhil, and Ebonya Washington. 2009. "Sticking with Your Vote: Cognitive Dissonance and Political Attitudes." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 1(1): 86-111.

DOI: 10.1257/app.1.1.86

Abstract

Cognitive dissonance theory predicts that the act of voting for a candidate leads to a more favorable opinion of the candidate in the future. We find support for the empirical relevance of cognitive dissonance to political attitudes. We examine the presidential opinion ratings of voting-age eligibles and ineligibles two years after the president's election. We find that eligibles show two to three times greater polarization of opinions than comparable ineligibles. We find smaller effects when we compare polarization in opinions of senators elected during high turnout presidential campaign years with senators elected during nonpresidential campaign years. (JEL D72)

Article Full-Text Access

Full-text Article

Additional Materials

Download Data Set (57.57 KB)

Authors

Mullainathan, Sendhil (Harvard U)
Washington, Ebonya (Yale U)

JEL Classifications

D72: Models of Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior

Comments

View Comments on This Article (0) | Login to post a comment