Sunday, November 25, 2012

Psychological Need


To make sure our product was really needed, we looked for psychological aspects that would increase the reason for making a physical stand rather than just an application.  We found some interesting papers.

Subtle environmental cues and voting

  • Stimuli in the environment have been shown to prime or activate content in memory, making related constructs more accessible, and doing so even outside conscious awareness (Bargh, 2006). Based on this fact, researchers found that subtle environmental cues can have a significant influence on consequential real-world decisions. Specifically, the type of polling location (e.g., church, school, etc.) people happen to be assigned to vote in a U.S. general election influences how they cast their ballots (Berger, Meredith & Wheeler, 2008).

Social environment and voting

  • Voting is widely regarded as a citizen’s duty (Blais 2000), and citizens worry that others will think less of them if they fail to participate in elections. Voters’ sense of civic duty has long been a leading explanation of voter turnout among both behavioral (Campbell, Gurin, and Miller 1954) and formal (Downs 1957; Riker and Ordeshook 1968) theories of voter turnout.
  • Communication can drastically increase within-group cooperation (thus, voting) (Schram & Sonnemans, 1996).
  • Many social scientists are aware that social embeddedness matters for behavior in public settings in general, and for voter participation in particular. Kenny (1992) for example, stresses the important influence of a voter’s immediate social environment on the decision to vote. One important element of the environmentis information about others’ behavior.


    Links for the papers:




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