Science says: Don't ask people to vote.. Ask them to be voters

[Ichingcarpenter]

To boost voter turnout, an unexpectedly simple turn of phrase may do the trick — ask people to be voters instead of just asking them to vote, scientists find.


In one experiment testing their idea, Bryan and his colleagues surveyed 34 Californians who were eligible to vote in the 2008 presidential election but were not registered to vote at the time. Half randomly got surveys with questions connecting voting with the word "voter," such as "How important is it to you to be a voter in the upcoming election?" The other half did not, with questions, such as "How important is it to you to vote in the upcoming election?" Afterward, 87.5 percent of those who received the voter-centric survey said they were very or extremely interested in voting compared with 55.6 percent of those who did not.

Two more experiments pinned down how these surveys influenced voter turnout in two elections — 88 potential voters in the 2008 presidential election in California and 214 volunteers facing the 2009 gubernatorial election in New Jersey. "Just referring to voting as 'being a voter' caused a major increase in turnout — more than 13 percent," Bryan said.

"I think the message from these findings is that people care a lot about seeing themselves as good and worthy," Bryan told LiveScience. "People know voting is a good thing to do but may not bother to vote because they dismiss it as 'just another behavior,' but calling it 'being a voter' signals that voting isn't just a behavior, it's a reflection of the kind of person you are."


http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/politics/stories/science-finds-ways-to-boost-voter-turnout

[aquart]

1. Brilliant. And true.

[surrealAmerican]

2. Do you ever find it discouraging that people are ...

... so easily manipulated by a slightly different turn of phrase, when the meaning hasn't changed a bit?

[WinkyDink]

3. Not really. I rather like that words are always shown to have power. I cannot abide those who like

to say, when discussing obscene language, "It's only a WORD!"

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. You must be a fricking liberal tree hugging democrat

now be sure to vote.

yeah words have power.

[Overseas]

5. K&R.

Very interesting.