Is There Backlash to Social Pressure? A Large-scale Field Experiment on Voter Mobilization

Mann, Christopher

doi:10.1007/s11109-010-9124-y

Cited by 70 publications

(52 citation statements)

References 43 publications

(55 reference statements)

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“…Telling registered voters that they were being studied, by contrast, produced much weaker effects. These results suggest that social pressure, and not merely being observed, has the greatest effect, a finding that has since been replicated by several follow-up experiments , Mann, 2010Panagopoulos, 2010Panagopoulos, , 2011Sinclair, McConnell, & Green, 2012) In sum, effective e-mail mobilization is far from guaranteed, but we expect the likelihood of success to increase with personalization and explicit social pressure. We further predict that the social pressure message will have a greater effect than personalization alone.…”

Section: Personalization and Social Pressure As Mobilization Tacticssupporting

confidence: 52%

Mobilizing Group Membership

Druckman

Green

2013

SAGE Open

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A randomized experiment was conducted to assess the effectiveness of three forms of e-mail appeals to prospective members of a newly formed professional group. The baseline condition consisted of an impersonal appeal; prospective members were sent a mass e-mail encouraging them to join. Participants in the personal condition received an e-mail with the same content, prefaced by a personal note from the group president. Participants in the social pressure condition received a personal note that called attention to the fact that they had previously signed a petition to form the professional group and urged them to make good on their earlier pledge (i.e., signing of the petition). Personalization is found to generate strong and statistically significant treatment effects. Even stronger are the effects of social pressure.

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Section: Personalization and Social Pressure As Mobilization Tacticssupporting

confidence: 52%

Mobilizing Group Membership

Druckman

Green

2013

SAGE Open

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“…First, switching from the social pressure of presenting people with their voting records to using messages with consistent norms would dramatically simplify the distribution process as there would be no need to collect voting records for every individual you wish to contact. Second, using social pressure entails the danger of psychological reactance or backlash, in which message targets express aggression or hostility toward the source of a message (Mann 2010;Matland and Murray 2013;Murray and Matland, forthcoming). There is little danger of reactance with a consistent-norms message.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mobilization Effects Using Mail

Murray

Matland

2013

Political Research Quarterly

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bstractWe use field experiments in Texas and Wisconsin to address voter mobilization and turnout by evaluating nonpartisan get-out-the-vote (GOTV) messages delivered via mail during 2010 gubernatorial campaigns. We manipulate three factors in the messages: social pressure, descriptive-and injunctive-voting norm consistency, and message timing. The results present an initial field-based confirmation that norm-consistent messages increase turnout; demonstrate significant message timing effects, which are mediated by state election rules; and indicate social pressure's effectiveness varies significantly more than previously found. These diverse findings suggest researchers place a greater emphasis on context v/hen evaluating experiments and the effects of mobilization messages.

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“…And while telephone appeals by professional phone banks-suffering from a stiff, scripted delivery-have no effect (Gerber and Green 2000a), volunteer phone calls (making either partisan or generic GOTV appeals) serve to increase turnout by 3 or 4% points (Nickerson 2005(Nickerson , 2006. Nontraditional, personalized appeals to both civic duty and threats to make public a voter's performance likewise have been demonstrated to have powerful motivating effects (Gerber et al 2008;Panagopoulos 2010;Mann 2010).…”

Section: Campaign Contact and Voter Turnoutmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of Petition Signing on Voter Turnout

2011

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Generally speaking, campaign-related contact motivates voters. One form of such contact not much explored in the voter mobilization literature is the petitioning for ballot initiatives that occurs with considerable frequency in about half the states and even more localities. Using newly-available data that allow us to match individual petition signers with their subsequent election behavior, we explore the role of having had a hand in a ballot measure's qualifying stage in propelling individual voters to the polls. Specifically, we perform multivariate analysis on a random sample of 1,000 registered Arkansas voters, 1,100 registered Florida voters, and all 71,119 registered voters in Gainesville, Florida to measure the influence of petition-signing in spurring voter turnout. We find marginal effects in the statewide samples, but substantial and significant turnout effects in the Gainesville municipal election-an off-cycle, low-profile election. Furthermore, the effect of petition-signing-across all of our samples-is strongest among irregular, as compared to habitual, voters. These findings are in keeping with recent campaign mobilization experimental research and comport with previous findings on the ''educative effects'' of ballot measures on voter turnout. Keywords Voter mobilization Á Direct democracy Á Voter turnoutThe turnout question has occupied the attention of political scientists for decades. Early scholarship placed a heavy emphasis on resources, i.e., the higher a voter's

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Is There Backlash to Social Pressure? A Large-scale Field Experiment on Voter Mobilization

Cited by 70 publications

References 43 publications

Mobilizing Group Membership

Mobilizing Group Membership

Mobilization Effects Using Mail

The Impact of Petition Signing on Voter Turnout

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