• DOI:10.1017/S0022381608090117
Corpus ID: 10783035

Descriptive Social Norms and Motivation to Vote: Everybody's Voting and so Should You

@article{Gerber2009DescriptiveSN,
  title={Descriptive Social Norms and Motivation to Vote: Everybody's Voting and so Should You},
  author={A. Gerber and T. Rogers},
  journal={The Journal of Politics},
  year={2009},
  volume={71},
  pages={178 - 191}
}

A. Gerber, T. Rogers

Published 2009

Political Science

The Journal of Politics

The fact that many citizens fail to vote is often cited to motivate others to vote. Psychological research on descriptive social norms suggests that emphasizing the opposite—that many do vote—would be a more effective message. In two get-out-the-vote field experiments, we find that messages emphasizing low expected turnout are less effective at motivating voters than messages emphasizing high expected turnout. The findings suggest that descriptive social norms affect vote intention only among… CONTINUE READING

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