Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, production of I Heart Radio. Hey
Speaker 1: brain Stuff, Lauren voge Obam here. Our podcast headquarters are
Speaker 1: in Atlanta, Georgia. Where as of this publication, we recently
Speaker 1: had a Senate runoff election, which got us thinking once
Speaker 1: again about the power of the democratic process and of
Speaker 1: the now ubiquitous I Voted sticker. Voting sticker selfies started
Speaker 1: going viral on Twitter and Instagram during the election and
Speaker 1: are now so popular that people who vote absentee feel
Speaker 1: like they're missing out. Artists around the country have been
Speaker 1: offering I Voted designs for printing at home during this
Speaker 1: election season. There's even a guy in New Jersey determined
Speaker 1: to send a sticker to every person who voted by mail.
Speaker 1: But as inconsequential as stickers might seem, our obsession with
Speaker 1: them makes perfect sense to social science researchers who study
Speaker 1: voter turnout and what motivates people to go to the polls.
Speaker 1: Old scivic duty is definitely a strong incentive, but so
Speaker 1: is social status. We spoke with Stefano Della Vigna, an
Speaker 1: economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley and author
Speaker 1: of the study voting to tell others one of many
Speaker 1: fascinating studies proving that we vote in part because we
Speaker 1: want our friends and neighbors to know that we voted.
Speaker 1: His study notes that it's a long established fact that
Speaker 1: of non voters lie to pollsters when asked if they
Speaker 1: voted in the last election. He said, on its face,
Speaker 1: this indicates that people hate to admit to being non voters.
Speaker 1: They face this trade off between telling the truth and
Speaker 1: looking bad or lying. Most people prefer others to see
Speaker 1: them as voters. It's one thing to lie to a
Speaker 1: stranger with a clipboard, but how much harder is it
Speaker 1: to lie to a friend or family member who asks
Speaker 1: if you voted. It's that expectation of being asked and
Speaker 1: the cost of lying to someone you know that could
Speaker 1: motivate and on the fence voter to go out and
Speaker 1: cast a ballot. Della Vignia calculates that the potential public
Speaker 1: shame of not voting is enough to boost voter participation
Speaker 1: by two to three percentage points in a tile election
Speaker 1: such as the runoffs here in Georgia. That can be huge.
Speaker 1: So how do those stickers play into all of this?
Speaker 1: When you slap a voting sticker on your chest, you're
Speaker 1: sending two clear messages to the other members of your
Speaker 1: social network. The first message, obviously, is that I voted.
Speaker 1: You're essentially answering the question before it's even asked. The
Speaker 1: second message is implied, but just as strong. Della Vignia said,
Speaker 1: if you see people wearing the sticker on election day,
Speaker 1: you might think, oh, geez, my grandma is going to
Speaker 1: ask me whether I voted. If you're on the fence,
Speaker 1: that might be enough to push you over. Delavignia study
Speaker 1: is not the only research that backs up the sneaky
Speaker 1: power of the I voted sticker. A landmark Swiss study
Speaker 1: back in two thousand five studied voter participation before and
Speaker 1: after a new law allowing voting by mail. This was
Speaker 1: government expected voter turnout to increase if voters were given
Speaker 1: the easier option of voting from home. Instead, voter turnout
Speaker 1: actually dropped, especially in smaller towns. Patricia Funk, an author
Speaker 1: of the Swiss study, wrote, as long as poll voting
Speaker 1: was the only option, there was an incentive or pressure
Speaker 1: to go to the polls only to be seen handing
Speaker 1: in the vote. Since in small communities people know each
Speaker 1: other better and gossip about who fulfills civic duties and
Speaker 1: who doesn't. The benefits of norm adherents were particularly high
Speaker 1: in this type of community, but when vote by mail
Speaker 1: became an option, the pressure to publicly vote decreased. People
Speaker 1: could just as easily lie and say that they voted
Speaker 1: from home. Voting stickers have been around since, but started
Speaker 1: to gain popularity during the tight year two thousand Bush
Speaker 1: Gore race with its disputed outcome. Social media has taken
Speaker 1: this colorful representation of voting to another level. Not every
Speaker 1: jurisdiction does offer stickers, though at fifteen cents a pop,
Speaker 1: the cost can add up when ordering for thousands or millions,
Speaker 1: but it might be worth it if voter participation increases.
Speaker 1: Facebook experimented with a clickable I Voted button with somewhat
Speaker 1: amazing results. Researchers from the University of California, San Diego
Speaker 1: tested different versions of the button on sixty one million
Speaker 1: Facebook users. When those Facebook users were shown six profile
Speaker 1: pictures of friends who had already voted, they were two
Speaker 1: point zero eight percent more likely to click the I
Speaker 1: Voted button themselves versus those users who only received the
Speaker 1: information encouraging voting but no pictures of friends. Of course,
Speaker 1: stickers aren't going to solve wider issues of voter suppression,
Speaker 1: but hopefully they can be part of convincing people to
Speaker 1: get out to the polls every time there's a local vote,
Speaker 1: and that every vote really does count. Yeah. Today's episode
Speaker 1: was written by Dave Ruse and produced by Tyler Klang.
Speaker 1: For more on this lots of other topics, visit house
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