Abstract:
Voters are often observed voting “against their interests”. We argue this is because voters don’t just ask themselves “which party best represents my policy preferences?” but also ask “how is someone like me supposed to vote?” Voters don’t just consider their personal preferences. They also consider the expectations of the salient groups with which they identify. These expectations are social norms, shared beliefs about what constitutes appropriate behavior for members of the identity group, and individuals’ choices reflect trade-offs between personal interests and adherence to norms. We illustrate this claim with survey experiments on representative samples of the US and British populations examining the group identity component of ideological self-placement and documenting norms that discourage voting against one's group and encourage support for the policies normatively associated with one’s group. We directly measure these norms and show that they influence real-stakes voting behavior when group identity is salient.