By Communications Staff
April 30, 2012

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As the U.S. presidential election approaches, political analysts are paying a
lot of attention to undecided voters. New research by a team of psychologists
from Canada, Italy and Switzerland shows these undecideds are not impartial,
but instead reveal a preference for information that confirms their gut
reactions.

“Many people who are undecided about a political issue or
competing candidates have at least some kind of gut reaction toward the
available options,” said Bertram Gawronski, Canada Research Chair in Social
Psychology at Western. “Because it feels uncomfortable being exposed to
information that questions one’s thoughts and preferences, undecideds search
for information that confirms their gut reactions and avoid information that
could question them.”

The article, Selective
Exposure in Decided and Undecided Individuals: Differential Relations to
Automatic Associations and Conscious Beliefs, authored by Gawronski, Silvia
Galdi, Luciano Arcuri and Malte Friese, is published in the May issue of the
journal Personality and Social Psychology
Bulletin.

According to Gawronski, selective exposure to supportive
information can determine future decisions at a time when people still feel
that they have not made up their mind.

“People use whatever information they have to make a decision
and they tend to believe that their decision is objective and unbiased. But
they often don’t realize that they have selectively exposed themselves to
information that simply supports their gut response,” Gawronski said.

To investigate information preferences in undecideds,
Gawronski and his collaborators asked their participants about their personal
views on a controversial political issue and then identified their spontaneous
gut reactions, or ‘automatic associations,’ by means of a computer task that measured
how quickly they responded to positive and negative words and pictures related
to the political issue. Afterward, the participants were given the opportunity
to read several newspaper articles whose headlines indicated either a favorable
or unfavorable view on the same issue. Although many participants told the
researchers they were undecided, they chose to read only those articles consistent
with their gut reactions measured by the computer task.

The results provide further insights into earlier
findings by the same research team, showing future political choices of
undecideds can be predicted by measuring their automatic associations. The
findings suggested a new way for pollsters to determine how undecideds will
vote, even before the voters know themselves. The new findings indicate that
undecided voters selectively search for information that confirms their
automatic associations, which ultimately determines their future voting decision.

According to Gawronski, the results also challenge a common
view on how people make decisions.

“It is pretty rare that people take a neutral look at the
available information and then make up their mind. In many cases, we already
have a preference and then just try to find arguments that justify our
preference,” Gawronski said.