Election, cognitive dissonance and political polarisation

One significant social phenomenon that happen in many democratic countries are political polarisation, where voters exhibit a polarised belief upon an identical piece of information about a candidate or political party after an election. Various researches have cited Festinger’s (1962) theory of cognitive dissonance as the major psychological explanation over the emergence of this phenomena, in their attempt on trying to establish a causal claim between the mere act of voting and political polarisation. This study aims to test a more evident causality of this notion via laboratory experiment involving a homogeneous group of university students, where confounding and unobservable variables that plague empirical studies are isolated. This economic experiment simulates bipartite presidential voting with two hypothetical candidates while controlling subjects’ preferences via induced value and without involving any real-life socio-political cues. The study divided subjects into two treatment conditions, one of those who can vote and another who cannot. Our hypothesis predicts that, for all subjects in treatment group, voting will amplify the cognitive dissonance, resulting in a more polarised belief which is measured from subjective probability statement. The data provide partial support for this hypothesis, where voting affects polarisation only on subjects whose supported candidate has lost the election.