Depression and attitudes to change in referendums: The case of Brexit

Abstract

Depression is the most common mental illness and its profound impact on cognition and decisionmaking has implications for political judgement. However, those implications are unclear in the case of referendums offering a choice between status quo and change. On one hand, one component of depression is the kind of life dissatisfaction associated with voting for change. Yet cognitive models also portray depression sufferers as biased towards the status quo: they are less inclined to research change, more pessimistic about its benefits and more likely to exaggerate its potential costs. In this paper, we use data from Understanding Society to examine the impact of those cross-pressures on support for Brexit. Prior to the referendum, while life dissatisfaction and generally poor health predicted support for Leaving the European Union (EU), those diagnosed with depression were disproportionately likely to support Remain. Supporting our claim that the latter was a sign of status quo bias, this difference disappeared once the result was in and leaving the EU had become the widespread expectation. The study highlights the unexplored importance of mental health for political judgements, emphasises the multidimensionality of conditions like depression and illustrates the psychological role of status quo bias in referendum voting.

Depression and political predispositions: Almost blue?

“…Second, I test for an alternative mechanism that is not based on ideology but on attitude to change. Unlike a recent research that finds evidence of a status quo bias in depressed people when it comes to political choice in situations of high uncertainty like the Brexit referendum (Bernardi and Johns, 2020), in the “normal” context of a national election ideology still predominates.…”

“…On the other hand, there is no systematic evidence of a depression-identification gap or that depressives’ partisanship (and vote intentions) is driven by attitudes to change rather than ideological orientations. This is interesting because Bernardi and Johns (2020)’s analyses of attitudes in the UK Brexit referendum find evidence of a status quo bias in clinically depressed people when risk is high and partisan evaluations do not primarily shape decision-making. This does not seem to be the case in the “normal” context of a general election.…”

“…The second alternative argument, still based on the research on decision-making in depression, advances a different mechanism. Being highly risk-averse and scared of upheaval depressives would prefer the status quo instead of change (for a political application see Bernardi and Johns, 2020), and so they would identify with the incumbent party. If depressives feel at the mercy of political events rather than in control of them, then it may be that their attitudes are similarly compliant with context.…”

Mental Health and Political Representation: A Roadmap

“…Only more recently have scholars started paying attention to the relationship between mental health and political attitudes. Yet this work exclusively examines the link between depression symptoms and diagnosis and political predispositions (Bernardi, 2020), attitudes to change in highly uncertain situations (Bernardi and Johns 2020), political efficacy (Bernardi et al, N.d.), political interest (Ojeda et al, N.d.), and evaluations of political objects (Bernardi and Johns N.d.).…”

A New Tunnel Effect? The Impact of Stress on Vote Choice

“…There is a large body of literature that has established a clear link between an individual's health status and electoral participation (Burden et al, 2017;Mattila et al, 2018;Gagné et al, 2020). Some work has focused more specifically on the link between mental health and voting (Johnson 2017;Bernardi 2020a;Bernardi and Johns 2020). For example, Denny and Doyle (2007) showed that poor mental health negatively influences voter turnout, while Sund et al (2017) showed that neuro-degenerative diseases, alcoholism and mental health issues likewise tend to reduce electoral participation.…”