Test Says Voters Are Decided

As the election draws near, undecided voters are increasingly under pressure to select their choice—or have they already made up their minds?

In many cases, the answer is yes, according to data collected by Harvard psychology professor Mahzarin R. Banaji, in conjunction with professor Brian Nosek of the University of Virginia and professor Tony Greenwald of the University of Washington.

The three scientists are collaborating on “Project Implicit,” a research Web site which allows visitors to complete various tests in order to gauge their subconscious associations. The tests cover a wide variety of topics, including racial, religious and gender biases as well as preferences among the presidential candidates.

“As psychologists, what we’re doing is using the Web site to understand some of the mechanisms that go into the act of voting—how our attitudes and preferences about social groups might affect our choice of a candidate,” Banaji said.

Nosek said the project began with tests based on the contenders in the primaries but switched to Barack Obama and John McCain when it became clear they would be the two main party candidates for the presidency.

Over 25,000 participants took the Obama-McCain test, about 4,000 of whom claimed to be undecided.

The results revealed that many of the undecided voters demonstrated an implicit preference for one candidate or the other. On average, participants reported feeling slightly greater affinity for Obama, but their implicit biases leaned toward McCain.

“They have this conflict,” Novek said, “Explicitly they want to like Obama, but implicitly they like McCain. Perhaps that’s playing a role in their undecided status.”

The Implicit Association Test Web site recently celebrated its tenth anniversary, meaning that this is the third election cycle for which tests have been conducted. In 2000, the IAT studies were surprisingly accurate predictors of primary winners. As Banaji recalled, many Democrats were explicitly supporting Bill Bradley, while many Republicans claimed to be supporting McCain. Yet results from the IAT showed that the same voters were implicitly biased toward Al Gore ’69 and George W. Bush, respectively—the two eventual nominees.

But the researchers cautioned against using their data to forecast the outcome of next Tuesday’s election. While Nosek said that “the undecided voters may break slightly more for McCain,” he added that he expected the overall effect to be relatively small.

Banaji also noted that because the data was collected online, it inherently “underestimates the poor, those who are not computer literate, and perhaps even conservatives.”

Nonetheless, the research presents fascinating questions for the academic world. Harvard Psychology Professor Ellen J. Langer called the work “fabulously important.” She added, “I think that our implicit biases can affect virtually all that we do. The importance of the work is pervasive.”