Sticking with Your Vote: Cognitive Dissonance and Political Attitudes

Cognitive dissonance theory predicts that the act of voting for a candidate leads to a more favorable opinion of the candidate in the future. We find support for the empirical relevance of cognitive dissonance to political attitudes. We examine the presidential opinion ratings of voting age eligibles and ineligibles two years after the president's election. We find that eligibles show 2-3 times greater polarization of opinions than comparable ineligibles. We find smaller effects when we compare polarization in opinions of senators elected during high turnout presidential campaign years with senators elected during non-presidential campaign years. We are extremely grateful to Thomas Wang for superb research assistance and to LaRue Allen, Stephen Ansolabehere, Jonathan Bendor, Don Green, Greg Huber, Lawrence Katz and Todd Rogers for very helpful suggestions. We would also like to thank seminar participants at the Toulouse Summer School in Psychology and Economics, Yale, University of Pittsburgh and Berkeley for comments. e-mail: [email protected] and [email protected]