Can Cognitive Dissonance Theory Explain Action Induced Changes in Political Preferences?

Tanja Artiga Gonzalez, Francesco Capozza and Georg Granic

No 9549, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: We present the results of a novel experiment investigating how participation in the electoral process can causally change political preference via cognitive dissonance theory. We present a novel experimental design, which complements the existing empirical literature, isolating the net effect of cognitive dissonance on preference changes. Our results suggest that cognitive dissonance created by expressing support for a losing candidate causally led participants to align their preferences with that of the supported candidate more closely. Our results, however, also uncovered a strong dependency of such preferences changes on the outcome of the election. When supported candidates won the election, no preference change was observed. Although more research is needed, our results may be an indication that previous studies overestimated the cognitive dissonance effect on preference changes.

Keywords: political participation; political support; political preferences; cognitive dissonance; online experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 D72 D91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-exp, nep-neu and nep-pol
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_9549

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