Why Do We Always Vote For The Same Candidate Even If He Proves To Be An Idiot?
I want to ask you a question: how can you tell if a given person is loving, or selfish, or violent, or any other label you can think of?
For purely operational reasons, I cannot hear your answer, but I can imagine it: Surely you would tell me that to know if the person in question possesses those qualities, I should first be able to observe how he or she behaves. And this does not surprise me. We judge others, and eventually apply labels to them, observing how they conduct themselves in their daily lives.
What does turn out to be a rather curious fact is that many times we use the same methodology to judge ourselves themselves. We know if we are affectionate by mentally reviewing the gestures of affection that we usually have with our partner, or our children, for example.
Usually the dynamics follow that order, even if we are not aware of it: First we look at how we behave and then we apply a label to ourselves, or we join a certain category, whether brave, funny, optimistic or sensitive. This is the first question that I want to establish in order to answer the question that shapes the title of this article.
And speaking of human qualities, the second question to take into account is the need for congruence that we experience most human beings.
Coherence, defined as a certain harmony between what a person says and does, is a highly valued virtue in all cultures. Otherwise, inconsistency results in erratic behavior, inconsistent or unpredictable. And the truth is that no one likes people who fail to conform to a line of conduct.
It is normal for those people who constantly change their minds, or are easily influenced, to be branded as lazy, weak-willed, or simply stupid. So, Consistency is a highly valued personality characteristic When we form an image about ourselves, we strive to be consistent with that image.
At all times, our own behavior tells us a lot about ourselves, even during election time. When we vote for the candidate So-and-so, at the same time we build an entire scaffolding that begins to function as support and facilitator who will help us vote again in the next elections In that sense, if we already decided for So-and-so the first time, it is coherent for us to continue along the same line of action and vote again for So-and-so the second time.
Electoral biases and persistence
The phenomenon becomes even more powerful if when we choose our candidate the first time, we proclaim it out loud and let everyone know. When we openly communicate our support for So-and-So in a kind of amateur partisan militancy, the need to be coherent under the attentive gaze of others is imposed on us with even greater force.
At this point, when it comes time to vote again, we not only suffer internal pressure to be consistent with our previous decision, we also suffer external pressure from those who know us.
But the topic does not end there, but has some even more surprising edges: It has been experimentally shown that when a person has formed an opinion on any topic, show him concrete evidence that shows that the truth is on the opposite side of the street. , it does not serve to persuade him the vast majority of the time ; Worse still, any solid evidence that indicates that this or that person could be wrong, contrary to what common sense says, helps that person cling even more to his or her belief.
This curious psychological phenomenon is known as “persistence.” and it is theorized that once someone has invested time and effort to convince themselves of something, they vehemently stick to that idea in the face of any hint of doubt or external threat. Know that dismantling a belief entrenched in the mind is extremely painful for the brain.
Why do we always vote for the same candidate?
It doesn’t matter much about the brutal economic or educational blunders that the ineffective politician on duty may be making; to those who voted for them, They have no choice but to continue defending it at all costs putting patches here and there, and constructing all kinds of rationalizations and fallacious justifications that help sustain the precarious cognitive scaffolding that is now shaky.
To accept that this time, instead of voting for So-and-so, it would be better to vote for Mengano, is to also accept that they were wrong from the beginning, and if they do so, they will also implicitly be accepting their own stupidity, and throwing away all the personal resources put in. game up to that point.
Most likely for that reason, despite everything, politicians who only focus on their own benefit totally detached from the needs of the majority of the people, continue to make good choices once they have come to power.
The need for internal consistency of those who originally voted for them can be very powerful. And the psychic cost of retracting is too high.
