Cognitive dissonance and political polarization

According to the theory of cognitive dissonance, the act of voting in and of itself could contribute to political polarization. This would show itself as a decreased willingness to adjust political attitudes towards well-liked candidates after receiving information that paints them in a bad light. A similar effect should occur for not so well-liked candidates after receiving positive information on them. This hypothesis was tested using an experiment where 412 subjects were randomly assigned to vote and non-vote conditions. OLS regression results show that voting subjects adjust their political attitude significantly less compared to non-voting subjects after receiving negative information on their most preferred candidate. However, this effect was not present for subjects on the political right. Similarly, voting subjects also adjusted their political attitude less compared to non-voting subjects after reading positive information on their least preferred candidate. The findings of this thesis improve the validity of similar empirical findings, while also improving the robustness of the finding that casting a vote affects political attitudes.