Posted on 10/28/2008 1:55:24 PM PDT by Maelstorm
Do "undecided" voters actually make their choices before they realize?
That is a question University of Virginia psychology professor Brian Nosek and his colleagues are trying to answer.
"Many people, especially early in the political process, declare themselves as undecided," Nosek said. "But while they have consciously said that they are undecided, they unconsciously may have already made a choice."
And in a close election, undecided voters may determine the outcome the moment they make their decisions known on Election Day.
Nosek and colleagues Mahzarin Banaji of Harvard University and Tony Greenwald of the University of Washington developed the Implicit Association Test to assess mental associations that may be different than what people know or say about themselves.
A dozen years of research and hundreds of published studies suggest that people have implicit belief systems that may contradict their declared beliefs. These implicit beliefs can affect actions, such as how they vote at the moment it comes time to explicitly decide.
The research team operates "Project Implicit," a publicly accessible research and education Web site (www.implicit.harvard.edu at which visitors can complete the Implicit Association Test to measure their own implicit associations. The test is available for a variety of topics, including an "Obama-McCain" task that was developed for the U.S. presidential election.
In its 10 years of existence, about 7 million people have completed tests at the Web site, including more than 25,000 who have tested their implicit preferences regarding presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain.
In the latter project, being conducted by Nosek, Greenwald and Colin Smith, a U.Va. graduate student, almost 15 percent of the participants (about 4,000 people) declared themselves as undecided between voting for Obama or McCain. However, many of these same participants show an implicit preference for Obama or McCain despite their explicit indecision.
"Undecided voters may have decided implicitly before they know that they have explicitly," Nosek said. U.S. undecided voters, on average, reported feeling slightly warmer toward Obama than McCain, but they implicitly showed a slight preference for McCain over Obama.
The researchers will follow up with the participants immediately after the election to assess their ultimate vote. Will implicit or explicit preferences drive the undecided voters' votes?
"We do not know, but we are excited to find out," Nosek said.
Importantly, while Project Implicit's sample of voters is large, it is not a representative sample of the United States. "With this study, we cannot draw conclusions about the electorate as a whole or whether implicit preferences are strong enough to swing the election," Nosek said.
Instead, the study offers an opportunity to learn how implicit preferences may shape the decisions of undecided voters. It follows a recent Italian study that showed that the implicit preferences of undecided voters predicted their eventual vote.
Other preliminary findings from the large U.S. study:
Implicitly, Democrats are strongly pro-Obama, and Republicans are strongly pro-McCain, similar to their explicit preferences. Independents are implicitly pro-Obama, on average, similar to current polling results. The most intriguing subsample is the large number of undecideds who appear to be leaning toward McCain implicitly and toward Obama explicitly.
"Participants are often surprised to learn that they may have unconscious biases regarding candidates, or racial or religious views that are quite different from their stated beliefs," Nosek said. "For example, few people in modern society are actively racist, but most of us possess implicit associations linking white people with good and black people with bad more easily than the reverse."
This divergence between implicit and explicit beliefs suggests that behavior may be influenced both by deliberate, explicit beliefs and by automatic, implicit reactions, Nosek said.
When it comes to "undecided" voters, the comparative influence of these unique feelings will become apparent the moment the vote is cast.
Undecided votes at this stage of the game are really living on another planet - they should be forced to take an exam before being given a ballot.
[i] [b] “Independents are implicitly pro-Obama” [/i] [/b]
we need to be worried about this remark. coz these are the people who will decide who wins this election.
I am not worried about this comment because it is wrong.
they should be forced to take an exam before being given a ballot..............................................
It would be great if a test was required for everyone when registering to vote.
I do wish they'd just say, "It's none of your business" instead of claiming to be undecided.
I agree, but that would “disproportionately” affect certain demographics......
I don’t think we have to worry about that. What is good is there is a large subsample of independents that are implicitely for McCain.
Oh goodie another “study”.
Just go VOTE!!!!!
so does this s’plain “I actually did vote for Obama before I voted against him?”
I tend to agree. This race may very well be too close to call on election day. There is a real possibility of McCain winning electorally and Obama winning the popular vote.
I’m not worried in the slightest, and I see you joined freerepublic.com today, funny, I was a member for a long time before I posted anything, what are you up to?
I’ll be voting on election day.
I think this election is like 1980. The undecideds will break toward the underdog late because they will realize what a total tool the frontrunner is.
Just another FRiend that joined today to spread their own special brand of doom and gloom. They’re all over the place lately. Problem for them is they are very transparent.
They must think we’re naive, wrong!
It doesn’t take a study to know the results of polls will be the same as they were last time and the time before:
Wrong.
I'm an independent and I can assure you I am not voting for Obama. I've never thrown myself over to the GOP side because I'm a conservative in a blue state and I don't sympathize with those big government libs that call themselves republicans around here.
For me the only reason to register with a major party is because you want to vote in a primary or because they truly align with your core principles. Since my state has historically been at the tail end of the primary season it tends to be meaningless and to be frank, neither George HW Bush, Bob Dole, George W Bush, nor John McCain have inspired me to make the effort to take the plunge and switch to GOP on an ideological level like Reagan would have. I might consider if for Palin or Jindal someday but not yet.
So I'm one of the coveted independents but I'm not undecided. I don't like McCain much, but I dislike Obama vehemently.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.