In my recent piece in the Behavioral Scientist, I explain how to reduce the barriers associated with taking political action, encourage citizens to stay focused, and sustain political engagement over a lifetime.
With the 2018 midterm elections looming, the stakes are high in American politics. Republicans aim to maintain control of Congress, and Democrats seek to win key elections to flip both chambers. Several new grassroots campaigns — largely organized by high-school students in response to the Parkland shooting — seek to address gun safety by mobilizing citizens to join large-scale political demonstrations across the country in March and April. Common sense might tell us that such high stakes would lead to high turnout and engagement across a variety of political actions throughout this election year. Unfortunately, research indicates that high political stakes don’t always translate to high levels of citizen engagement.
The resistance movement has brought with it an abundance of new tech tools and resources designed to help everyday citizens use their voices to influence the political system. For instance, organizations like Flippable and Swing Lefthave created tools to help fundraise, volunteer, and connect with other progressive citizens in key election districts. Groups like Daily Action and 5 Calls have built websites, apps, and tech platforms to help citizens take action by providing topics, scripts, and phone numbers for calling elected officials about pressing political issues. These tools have become vital to the resistance movement for mobilizing citizens to take action. At CitizenBe, we’re using behavioral science to help progressive groups understand how to make these tools more effective.
Recently, we’ve been working with our friends at Daily Action to uncover how to sustain calling behaviors over time. For the last year, Daily Action has been sending its users daily text messages asking them to make a call about an important issue and tracking the response rates. We explored a data set of 259 call requests sent to over 200,000 Daily Action users over a period of time from December 2016 until August 2017. We looked at whether the percentage of people who responded to the call request changed over time and whether this relationship varied by the topic of the call. In particular, we were interested in topics that emerged repeatedly in call requests, like the investigation of Russian meddling in the US election and Republican attempts to repeal or replace Obamacare. Here’s what we found:
1. Over time, calls have decreased. The graph below depicts a high peak in response rates around Inauguration Day. Since then, response rates have decreased, but appear to have leveled off somewhat. Though this decrease in activity may be somewhat discouraging to progressive activists, the pattern follows a cycle that is typical of civil movements.
2. Across all topics, people were significantly less likely to call if they had already been asked to call about that topic before. On average, users were almost twice as likely to take action when they were asked to make a call about a topic for the first time compared to when they were asked for a second or third (or more) time.
3. This was especially true for calls about Russia: The more people were asked to call about Russia, the smaller the response rate. During the span of call requests we analyzed, users were asked to make 20 calls about Russia and there was a significant downward trend in response rates over time.
4. For calls about health care, the opposite pattern emerges: The more people were asked to call about health care, the greater the response rate. We probed two periods of time in which the topic of the calls to action was predominantly health care related. The first was the two week period leading up to June 29th, around the time it became clear Mitch McConnell would delay the vote to repeal ObamaCare until after the Fourth of July recess. During this 13 day period, 100% of call requests were about health care. Unlike repeated call requests about Russia, we found that over time, the more people were asked to make calls about healthcare, the more likely they were to take action and make the call.
The second time span we explored was the three week period leading up to July 28th when a scaled-down version of an ObamaCare repeal bill was dramatically voted down in the early morning hours. During these 21 days, 70% of all call requests were about health care. Consistent with the healthcare-related finding above, we found that over time, the more people were asked to make calls about health care, the more likely they were to take action.
So why do requests about healthcare lead to more calls, while requests about Russia lead to fewer calls?
One possibility to explain why response rates increased with repeated call requests about healthcare is that callers may have felt like this was an issue they were winning. During each of these time spans, there were manypositivesigns that Republicans would not reach number of votes needed to pass a bill to repeal or replace existing healthcare policies. As a result, callers may have felt like their calls were making a difference that might ultimately end in success, thus sustaining their engagement in calling. Contrast this with the investigation of Russian interference in the US election, where it seems less like activist efforts have resulted in tangible victories on the issue (at least as of August). In the case of Russia, callers may not have felt like their efforts were having a meaningful impact, thus resulting in burnout or habituation.
Behavioral science and psychological theory support this idea that people are more likely to sustain engagement in an activity if they feel like they are on the winning side. For instance, research on bandwagon effects indicates that news of winning makes people more likely to show their support — like when a successful sports team gains new fans. In addition, field experiments on email fundraising have found that messages indicating an incumbent candidate was narrowly leading in the polls were more effective in garnering donations from uncommitted voters than messages indicating a candidate was narrowly losing in the polls.
Another possibility to explain these findings involves differences in construal level between the topics of the Russian investigation and healthcare. Construal level refers to the psychological distance and the extent to which a person’s thoughts about a topic are abstract or concrete. Drawing from this perspective, it’s possible that the topic of healthcare hit close to home and felt personally relevant to callers, whereas the topic of the Russian investigation may have felt psychologically distant and unlikely to have many personal ramifications for callers. Ultimately, the greater psychological distance associated with the Russian investigation may have resulted in lower response rates because people felt like their immediate actions were less relevant and less likely to influence outcomes.
Though the above findings are promising, a more rigorous study would be needed to better understand whether construal level or perceptions about the “winnability” of an issue are mechanisms that drive increased engagement in calling. Going forward, it will also be useful to conduct experimental research with the goal of understanding how to help callers feel like every call they make is winnable and personally relevant. At CitizenBe, we believe that these are behavioral science questions we are uniquely qualified to address. If you are a progressive organization interested in incorporating these ideas into your work, we would love to hear from you. Please reach out to us at info@citizenbe.org.
CitizenBe is a non-profit group of social and behavioral scientists that works to create and sustain impactful political participation. We help groups become more effective through evidence-based research and testing. If you’d like more info, please reach out to us at info@citizenbe.org.
Note: This piece was originally posted on CitizenBe’s Medium page on November 22, 2017.
In the wake of the 2016 election, we’ve seen a surge in political participationas organizations across the country have coalesced to form the resistance movement. Groups like 5 Calls, Daily Action, and Swing Left are organizing citizens to take action by calling elected officials, attending town hall meetings, and donating to progressive causes. The challenge for many of these organizations is that motivating people to take political action for the first time is difficult — and even more difficult to sustain engagement in political action over the long run. So what really drives political participation? And what should political organizations be doing to keep citizens engaged? At CitizenBe, these are some of the questions we’re tackling.
During the surge of post-inauguration activism, we surveyed 527 Hillary Clinton supporters from across the country and asked them what civic actions they took after the 2016 election (e.g., called a representative, signed a petition, participated in a march), how they evaluated those actions, and what actions they would be willing to do in the future. Here’s what we found:
People are planning to take fewer actions in the future. Eighty percent of people reported taking at least one civic action in the last month, but 72% of these same people reported that they planned to do less in the following month. We found that people reported taking 2.5 actions in the previous month, but were only planning to take 1.2 actions in the future. One explanation for this dropoff in past vs future political actions is a psychological phenomenon called moral licensing, which occurs when a person gives themselves permission to do something “bad” (e.g., stop taking political action) because they’ve just done something good. For instance, people who organized a local march might use the time and energy they spent planning as a justification for doing less in the future because they feel like they’ve already done their part. Fortunately, this isn’t the end of the story.
Our findings also suggest that the way people feel during their recent actions may influence their willingness to act again. Below, we offer three suggestions for organizations or activists groups who have the goal of sustaining long-term engagement in political actions.
1. Invest in helping people feel good about their actions. We found that people who felt good while taking past actions were willing to take more actions in the future than people who felt negative or neutral.
This finding highlights the importance of considering the way political actions make people feel. Activist groups may want to pay special attention to the whether people are having fun while taking action and/or ensure people are taking actions that match their skillsets and interests.
2. Pay particular attention to ensuring the people most committed to your cause feel good about their actions. We found that on average, people who reported high commitment to political participation in the resistance movement were willing to take 1.9 actions in the future if they reported feeling good about past actions, but were only willing to take 0.6 actions in the future if they have low levels of good feelings about past actions. People with low levels of commitment on average had very little willingness to take action in the future regardless of whether they felt good about their past actions.
This finding is somewhat counterintuitive because one might expect that highly committed individuals would be motivated enough to plan future actions, regardless. But instead, the most committed individuals are exactly the demographic of people activist organizations may want to target to make sure the actions they’re engaging in are pleasant, enjoyable experiences. Doing so may result in better long term engagement from a group of people who are already committed to participating in the resistance movement.
3. Demonstrate that taking action is a social norm. We found that on average, people who felt their past actions were a social norm were significantly more willing to take future action than people who believed their past actions would have a high impact on the political system.
For better or worse, this finding suggests that people are considering what they believe others are doing when they make decisions about their own willingness to take action. Thus, activist groups may be able to increase long-term engagement by making actions more visible to others and increasing the perception that “everybody’s doing it.”
CitizenBe is a non-profit group of social and behavioral scientists that works to create and sustain impactful political participation. We help groups become more effective through evidence-based research and testing. If you’d like more info, please reach out to us at info@citizenbe.org.
With November quickly approaching, all eyes are on Virginia. Given the current volatile political climate, many campaigns and organizations — such as Sister District, flippable, and Spread the Vote — are eager utilize the energy and momentum behind the resistance movement to get out the vote (GOTV) in Virginia. Unfortunately, harnessing this energy is a nuanced task and sometimes, unbridled enthusiasm and outreach can actually be detrimental for GOTV strategies. As behavioral researchers, we are studying what went right (and wrong) in recent GOTV efforts. So how can Democrats make sure they avoid a loss in Virginia? We surveyed residents of Georgia during their special election and here’s what we learned.
In our June survey of 150 residents from GA6, 83% of respondents were contacted by at least one campaign. Nearly 1 out of 5 respondents reported being contacted by the Ossoff campaign more than 10 times. Many of us assume more voter contact leads to more voter turnout. Indeed, this association turned up in our data: people who received 4+ contacts from campaigns were significantly more likely to vote than people who received 1–3 contacts or no contacts at all. However, this relationship is not necessarily causal and it’s also possible that campaigns more frequently contacted people who were likely to vote. But even if it is the case that more voter contact leads to more voter turnout, our research has uncovered some reasons for concern about potentially excessive amounts of voter contact.
Too much voter contact may result in more confusion about the campaign’s message.
Our results indicate that people who received 1–3 contacts had a clearer understanding of the Democrats’ message than people who received no contact at all. However, people who received 4+ contacts reported having a less clear understanding of the Democrats message relative to those who received 1–3 contacts. One possible explanation for these findings is that voter contact from multiple sources (e.g., campaigns, political organizations, local volunteers) may actually muddy the overall GOTV effort by causing confusion about the campaign’s message.
Too much voter contact may decrease the likelihood that a person takes future political actions.
We found a similar pattern with the number of contacts a voter received and their interest in taking future political actions. That is, people who received 1–3 contacts reported more interest in taking future political actions (e.g., calling an elected official, attending a town hall meeting, donating to a campaign) than people who received no contact at all. However, people who received 4+ contacts reported less interest in taking future political actions than people who received 1–3 contacts. This finding may be attributable a psychological construct called moral licensing, which happens when people do something good and decide they’ve done enough, suppressing future action.
To add context to these findings, it is useful to understand that, especially in the last few weeks of an election, campaigns target strong Democratic voters to ensure the “base” turns out. Thus these findings are particularly problematic because the people who ultimately ended up feeling confused by the Democrats’ message and less likely to take future political actions were their own base voters. It should go without saying that this cannot continue to happen if Democrats want to win in the long run.
Luckily, there are solutions to these problems. Here’s our roadmap for how Democrats can learn from the past and win in Virginia and beyond.
Work together to coordinate GOTV efforts. While voter contact is certainly important to GOTV efforts, too much voter contact might actually be counterproductive or lead to undesirable side-effects like voter confusion and reduced interest in taking future political actions. A solution to this problem is to coordinate efforts across campaigns, political organizations, and local volunteers to ensure voter outreach is clear, uniform, and kept to a reasonable number of contacts.
Look beyond the current election. Winning Virginia should not have to come at the cost of undermining future political goals. More attention should be paid to turning citizens into lifelong voters and political participants instead of a short-sighted focus on soliciting their vote in the next election without consideration of how these efforts might affect their future political actions. Going forward, factors such as moral licensing and psychological burnout should be considered carefully.
Step up the data game. Relying on intuitions or anecdotal evidence can be misleading, so taking the time to measure the effectiveness of GOTV or other political strategies is well worth the time and the energy. Designing and conducting an experiment is really the best way for a campaign or organization to know if their strategies truly work.
CitizenBe is a non-profit group of social and behavioral scientists that works to create and sustain impactful political participation. We help groups become more effective through evidence-based research and testing. If you’d like more info, please reach out to us at info@citizenbe.org.
