Voters may treat their own vote as diagnostic of millions of like-minded others

Evidence

Elsewhere (Quattrone & Tversky, 1984) we have shown that people often fail to distinguish between causal contingencies (acts that produce an outcome) and diagnostic contingencies (acts that are merely correlated with an outcome). For example, there is a widespread belief that attitudes are correlated with actions. Therefore, some people may reason that if they decide to vote, that decision would imply that others with similar political attitudes would also decide to vote. Similarly, they may reason that if they decide to abstain, others who share their political attitudes will also abstain. Because the preferred candidates can defeat the opposition only if politically like-minded citizens vote in greater numbers than do politically unlike-minded citizens, the individual may infer that he or she had better vote; that is, each citizen may regard his or her single vote as diagnostic of millions of votes, which would substantially inflate the subjective probability of one’s vote making a difference. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2514

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the ‘voter’s illusion’ concept and distinguishes causal from diagnostic contingencies.
• SEED: The voter’s illusion could anchor an essay on how people rationalize political participation and collective action.