Poorly designed ballots can prevent voters from understanding, seeing, using, and processing information correctly, which can lead to voting failures that alter the outcome of elections. Applied psychologists and human factors engineers can make a real difference in ensuring that ballots accurately capture voter intent.
Observing the way readers' eyes move can predict how voters will respond to real world ballot measures.
The views expressed by political party leaders can change how individual voters feel about an issue, according to findings from a longitudinal study of voters in New Zealand.
Emotion trumps partisanship and ideology when people evaluate political candidates, Linda Isbell’s research shows.
APS Fellow Jonathan Haidt explains how the science of moral judgment can shed light on voter behavior, political ideology, and compromise.
Concern over the security of the voting process is a recurring issue, but psychological science suggests an even bigger problem may lurk within our voting systems: poor design.
Supporters of a political measure are more influenced by their initial preferences than cold, hard evidence suggesting that the measure won’t go their way, a study shows.
Psychologists have found that we tend to think people who are similar to us in one explicit way—say, religion or lifestyle—will act and believe as we do, and vote as we do.
Neighbors’ lawn signs, public opinion polls and even a conversation in the next restaurant booth can affect how people vote in an election. But it all depends on how far away the election is.
