ThankYouForVoting.pdf

Thank You for Voting: Gratitude Expression andVoter Mobilization

Costas Panagopoulos Fordham University

Political scientists are increasingly exploring the psychological underpinnings of voting behavior using fieldexperimental techniques. Research in psychology demonstrates that gratitude expression reinforces prosocialbehavior. This article reports the results of the three randomized field experiments designed to investigate theimpact of gratitude expression on voter turnout. The experiments were conducted in a range of electoral settings,and the results suggest thanking voters for voting in a previous election boosts participation levels in subsequentelections. Moreover, the gratitude expression effect I observe appears to be distinct from social pressure and is robustacross subgroups of voters, including minorities and women, and both low- and high-propensity voters.

Scholars believe psychological mechanisms shapeeffort and behavior (Gollwitzer and Moskowitz1996). Researchers are increasingly exploring

the psychological underpinnings of political action,and a consensus is emerging that emotions exertpowerful influence over individuals’ political atti-tudes and behavior, including voting (Brader 2005;Marcus, Neuman, and MacKuen 2000; Neuman et al.2007). Voting is an example of prosocial behavior, anaction that promotes a collective cause at a personalcost to oneself. The probability that one voter affectsthe outcome is statistically miniscule, while the costsassociated with voting are nonnegligible. Psychologistsclaim there exists a special link between emotions andprosocial acts like voting, arguing that initiating andguiding goal-oriented—including prosocial—behavioris a primary function of emotions (Barrett and Campos1987; Cosmides and Tooby 2000; Frijda 1986; LeDoux1996).

Political scientists commonly employ field exper-imental techniques to study the impact of varioustactics and approaches on voter mobilization (Greenand Gerber 2008). Recent scholarship focuses onisolating the impact of psychological factors likeemotions on political behavior (Gerber, Green, andLarimer 2008, 2010; Panagopoulos 2010). A growingbody of field experimental literature suggests both

negative and positive emotions influence electoralparticipation. Manipulations that activate feelings ofshame in particular appear to stimulate prosocialbehavior considerably (Bear, Manning, and Izard2003; Gerber, Green, and Larimer 2008, 2010), butthere is also evidence that positive emotions, such aspride, have the capacity to motivate prosocial activity(Panagopoulos 2010; Williams and DeSteno 2008).This study uses field experimental techniques toinvestigate the impact of gratitude expression onvoting behavior, an area of inquiry that has beenalmost entirely overlooked by political scientists.1

This article is organized as follows. The followingsection summarizes the existing theoretical literatureabout gratitude and prosocial behavior, primarily asit has been advanced by psychologists. The reviewallows us to formulate hypotheses about the impactof gratitude expression on voting. I then describe thedetails of three field experiments designed to test thehypothesis I advance and present the experimentalresults in the subsequent sections. The evidence I pro-vide suggests thanking citizens for voting in the paststimulates their propensity to do so again. Against abackdrop of a wide range of ineffective mobilizationtactics (Green and Gerber 2008), the findings suggestsurprising generality for this effect. A discussionabout the implications of the experimental results

The Journal of Politics, Vol. 73, No. 3, July 2011, Pp. 707–717 doi:10.1017/S0022381611000405

� Southern Political Science Association, 2011 ISSN 0022-3816

1Data and supporting materials necessary to reproduce the numerical results will be made available via a replication archive atwww.costaspanagopoulos.com upon publication. An online appendix containing supplementary materials can be found at https://journals.cambridge.org/jop. Financial support for this research was provided by the Institution of Social and Policy Studies at YaleUniversity and by Fordham University.

707

and concluding remarks are presented in the finalsection.

Gratitude Expression and ProsocialBehavior

Gratitude is commonly viewed by psychologists as apositive emotion that flows from the perception thatone has benefited from the costly, intentional or volun-tary act of another person (McCullough et al. 2008,281). Gratitude was largely neglected by researchersuntil the twenty-first century, but studies exploringgratitude’s distinct social causes and effects are nowflourishing (Emmons and McCullough 2003, 2004;McCullough, Kimeldorf, and Cohen 2008). Scholarsdistinguish gratitude from related emotions, likehappiness or feelings of indebtedness (McCullough,Kimeldorf, and Cohen 2008). Although other positiveemotions, such as happiness or amusement have thecapacity to promote prosocial action, gratitude isdifferent because it stimulates helping even when it iscostly to the helper (McCullough, Kimeldorf, andCohen 2008). Gratitude is also distinct from obliga-tion and indebtedness, sentiments that studies revealhave different, and often negative, psychologicaleffects. Psychologists argue that experiencing grati-tude motivates beneficiaries to repay their benefactors(and even to extend generosity to third parties) andthat expressions of gratitude reinforce benefactors fortheir generosity and motivate them to continue to actbenevolently. Scholars speculate that gratitude andgratitude expression are rooted in evolutionary oradaptive processes and that selection pressurescrafted modern forms of gratitude to facilitate socialexchange (McCullough, Kimeldorf, and Cohen 2008;Trivers 1971). Gratitude is believed to have evolvedto stimulate both direct, reciprocal altruism (Trivers1971) as well as ‘‘upstream reciprocity’’ that involvespassing benefits on to third parties instead of return-ing benefits to one’s benefactors (Nowak and Roch2006).

There is mounting empirical evidence that grat-itude motivates prosocial behavior (Bartlett andDeSteno 2006; McCullough et al. 2001; Tsang2006). McCullough et al. (2001) proposed that grati-tude reinforces prosocial behavior because expressionsof gratitude (saying ‘‘thanks,’’ for example) validatethe efforts benefactors put forth on others’ behalf andincrease the likelihood that benefactors will behaveprosocially again in the future. Such thanking behav-ior is commonplace in a wide range of settings,

especially by groups or individuals (fundraisers,volunteer recruiters or peer-reviewed journal editors,for instance) who rely, typically repeatedly, on self-less, altruistic, or philanthropic behavior. Previousstudies reveal benefactors who are thanked for theirefforts are willing to give more and work harder onbehalf of others when future opportunities arisecompared to benefactors who have not been thanked(McCullough et al. 2001). Field experimental studiesfind that gratitude expression can reinforce kidneydonation (Bernstein and Simmons 1974), volunteer-ing behavior toward people with HIV/AIDS (Bennett,Ross, and Sunderland, 1996), and more visits fromcase managers in a residential treatment program(Clark, Northrop, and Barkshire 1988; cf. Bono andMcCullough 2006). Lab experiments provide analo-gous evidence (Clark 1975; Goldman, Seever, andSeever 1982; McGovern, Ditzian, and Taylor 1975;Moss and Page 1972). Similarly, in commercialcontexts, Rind and Bordia (1995) find that writing‘‘thank you’’ on a restaurant bill raises servers’ tips,and Carey et al. (1976) show that thanking consum-ers for prior purchases stimulates repeat purchasingbehavior, compared to customers who are notthanked. McCullough, Emmons, and Tsang (2002)show that individuals who report habitually experi-encing gratitude engage more frequently in prosocialbehaviors than do individuals who experience grati-tude less often. Experimental evidence of gratitude’scausal force in shaping prosocial behavior is alsoprovided by Bartlett and DeSteno (2006, 324). Theauthors found strong evidence that gratitude plays animportant role in facilitating costly behavior in amanner distinct from that of a general positive stateor simple awareness of prosocial norms (Bartlett andDeSteno 2006). Such results lead McCullough,Kimeldorf, and Cohen (2008, 282) to speculate thata beneficiary’s expression of appreciation acknowl-edges to the benefactor that he or she has noticed akindness and may be prone to reciprocate when afuture opportunity arises.

In this article, I explore the impact of expressinggratitude on voting in elections. I implement threefield experiments to test the hypothesis that express-ing appreciation to voters for having participated in aprevious election will stimulate their propensity to doso again in a subsequent election. These are the firstrandomized field experiments of which I am awaredesigned to investigate the impact of gratitudeexpression on voter turnout.

Randomized experiments assign units of obser-vation randomly to treatment and control groups,a feature that ensures the samples’ characteristics

708 costas panagopoulos

(observed and unobserved) are similarly distributed.Randomization thus enhances the likelihood ofobtaining unbiased estimates of causal effects andfacilitates reliable causal inference. Field experiments,as distinct from laboratory experiments, study theeffects of an intervention within a naturalistic settingin which subjects are unaware they are taking part ina study. As such, field experiments are typicallyunobtrusive interventions into real-world processesthat do not activate subjects’ self-consciousness orrelated psychological concerns (social desirability ordemand effects, for example) that flow from subjects’knowledge that they are being studied. Field exper-imentation enjoys a long tradition in political science,with applications in electoral settings dating as farback as Gosnell (1927). More recently, scholars haveturned increasingly to randomized field experimentsto isolate the causal impact of various activities onvoter turnout (Green and Gerber 2008).

In the experiments described below, the units ofobservation are individuals (registered voters), theinterventions are nonpartisan mailings, and the out-come variable is individual voter turnout in theelection, verified using official public records. I notethat previous field experiments have found only weakeffects from nonpartisan mail interventions; suchtreatments appear to boost turnout by less than 0.5percentage points on average (Green and Gerber2008). If the active ingredient is rooted in triggeringpowerful, psychological mechanisms via the substanceof the appeal, as recent research suggests (Gerber,Green, and Larimer 2008, 2010; Panagopoulos 2010),I expect the expression of gratitude by mail wouldresult in greater effectiveness.

Experiment 1: Staten Island, NewYork (February 2009, Special

Election)

The initial field experiment was conducted in NewYork City Council District 49, located on StatenIsland, New York, prior to the February 24, 2009special election to fill a vacancy on the Council.Special elections are typically low-salience affairs thatattract relatively few competing communications,making them an ideal laboratory to study the effectof my intervention. A total of 87,389 registered voterswere eligible to vote in the February 2009 election onStaten Island, and the election featured a contest be-tween six opponents. Candidates in special electionsin New York City are not permitted to appear on the

ballot under established party labels, so the electionwas essentially nonpartisan. Ultimately, KennethMitchell was elected with 40.1% of the vote, whileDeborah Rose received 37.1% of the vote to earnsecond place. Overall voter turnout in the specialelection was 12.5% among registered voters.

The complete experimental sample was 10,916registered voters residing in single-voter householdswho had voted in the previous (November 2005)municipal election in New York City. Voters wererandomly assigned to either the control group or toone of two treatment groups described in thefollowing section. Voters assigned to the treatmentgroups were sent a postcard mailing within the weekprior to the election.

To ensure that random assignment generatedtreatment and control groups that were balanced interms of observable characteristics, I conducted a seriesof randomization checks. The results, provided in theonline appendix (Table 1) present mean turnout levelsfor 10 prior elections and confirm the randomizationexercise yielded experimental groups that were bal-anced with respect to prior voting.2

Subjects assigned to the treatment conditionsreceived one of two mailings printed on simple,4’’x6’’ white postcards. Both mailings were strictlynonpartisan. The first treatment simply remindedvoters about the upcoming election and encouragedthem to vote; it incorporated no additional informa-tion besides the blandishment to vote. Although therewas a separate control group that received no mail-ing, the first treatment provides an additional base-line for comparison with the gratitude treatment. AsI note above, I do not expect to find a strong effectfrom this treatment. Subjects assigned to the grati-tude condition were sent a postcard that thankedvoters for voting in the previous (November 2005)election and urged to vote in the 2009 special election(see Appendix A for mailing samples)3. The purecontrol group was comprised of 8,540 subjects, while

2Balance can also be confirmed statistically using multinomiallogit to predict experimental assignment as a function of the 10covariates. As expected, a likelihood ratio test with 20 degrees offreedom (10 covariates times two treatments) is nonsignificant(LR58.66, p5.56). Similar analyses confirm balance for the othertwo experiments discussed below; details are not reported butavailable upon request.

3All treatments employed in each of the three experiments Ireport in this article invoked notions of civic duty, potentiallyconfounding the effects of gratitude expression with civic duty.Even as prior research has showed civic duty appeals delivered viamail are generally ineffective (Green and Gerber 2008), Iacknowledge this potential limitation.

gratitude expression and voter mobilization 709

398 voters were randomly assigned to receive thepostcard reminder, and 1,978 were assigned to thegratitude treatment condition. The mailing wasarranged so that subjects would receive the postcardsapproximately three to seven days prior to theelection.

Following the February 2009 special election, Iobtained validated voter turnout data from theofficial New York City voter file. Table 1 reportsthe basic turnout rates for the group of subjectsassigned to each treatment condition. The controlgroup in the experiment voted at a rate of 23.5%.4

Turnout amongst voters assigned to receive thereminder postcard was only slightly higher (23.9%),suggesting a modest turnout boost of 0.4 percentagepoints (SE52.2). Subjects assigned to receive thegratitude treatment voted at a rate of 25.9%, imply-ing an intent-to-treat (ITT) effect of 2.4 percentagepoints (SE51.1) on average.5

For more rigorous analysis of the experimentalresults, I employ multiple regression (OLS) to obtainestimates of the treatment effects. This approachpermits the inclusion of control variables to correctfor imbalances between experimental groups due tochance. I estimate two models: equation (1) expressesindividual voter turnout as a linear function of theexperimental treatment conditions. The results of alinear regression in which voter turnout (Yi) forindividual i is regressed on dummy variables {D1i,D2i . . . Dti} denoting each of the treatments (in thecase of the first experiment, two treatments; thereference category is the control group) are presented

in the first column of Table 2. This model may bewritten simply as:

Yi 5 b0 þ b1D1i þ :::þ btDti þ ui; ð1Þ

where ui represents an unobserved disturbance term.Equation (2) is embellished to include full bat-

teries of available covariates. The inclusion of cova-riates is optional, but it may reduce the disturbancevariance and improve the statistical precision of theestimated treatment effects. The model may bewritten as:

Yi 5 b0 þ b1D1i þ :::þ btDti þ l1V1i þ :::þ ltVti þ ui

ð2Þ

where (l)s represent parameters associated with eachcovariate (V), and ui represents an unobserveddisturbance term. The results are presented in thesecond column of Table 2.6

The regression results parallel my initial findings.The estimations reveal that subjects exposed to thegratitude treatment were effectively mobilized to votein the special election, relative to the control group,while the reminder treatment exerted no appreciableimpact. I note the null effect I detect for the ‘‘merereminder’’ treatment is consistent with a number ofprevious get-out-the-vote field experiments that ex-amine the impact of nonpartisan appeals to votedelivered via mail (Green and Gerber 2008). Esti-mates of the intent-to-treat effects across the twospecifications are quite robust; the addition of co-variates for prior voting in recent elections (Model 2)adjusts the estimates only modestly. The results implythe gratitude treatment elevated turnout by 3.0percentage points on average, an effect that is statisti-cally significant at the p , .01 level. I underscore thefact that the magnitude of this effect is six timesstronger than what is typical for a nonpartisan mailintervention (Green and Gerber 2008). Calculating a90% confidence interval around the estimated treat-ment effect of 3.0 percentage points generated byModel 2 reveals the boost in turnout attributable to asingle mailing that expresses gratitude for priorvoting can range from 1.36 percentage points, whichis already nearly three times the impact of an averagepiece of mail, to as much as 4.64 percentage points, astriking effect, relative to previous mail campaigns,that is roughly on par with the impact of a mailingdesigned to exert social pressure by showing voters

TABLE 1 Experimental Results (Staten Island, NY,February 2009)

Experimental Group NTurnout

(%)Intent-to-

treat (ITT)

Gratitude Treatment 1,978 25.9 +2.4 (1.1)Reminder 398 23.9 +0.4 (2.2)Control 8,540 23.5

Note: Standard errors in parentheses.

4Readers are reminded that the experimental sample consisted ofvoters who had voted in the 2005 election.

5I acknowledge that some subjects assigned to be treated may nothave been successfully contacted, but reliable estimates of contactrates for direct mailings are unavailable. Thus, I report intent-to-treat effects throughout, noting these are likely conservativeestimates of the treatment effects. Taking contact rates intoaccount would only magnify the treatment effects I report.

6Because I employ similar procedures to analyze subsequentstudies, they are presented here in greater detail but onlysummarized below.


their own voting records (Gerber, Green, and Lar-imer 2008) and even other policy interventions likeElection Day registration and vote-by-mail fashionedto stimulate turnout (Knack 2001); effects of thismagnitude have rarely been encountered in random-ized field experiments designed to mobilize electoralparticipation using direct mail treatments, even whensubjects have received as many as nine pieces of mail(Gerber, Green, and Larimer 2008).

Vote Propensity and HeterogeneousTreatment Effects

Recent studies suggest voting propensity may con-dition the relationship between efforts designed tomobilize voters and the decision to vote (Arceneauxand Nickerson 2009). Arceneaux and Nickerson (2009)argue that high-propensity voters will be more recep-tive to mobilization efforts in low-salience electionsin which few voters are either aware of or interested inthe campaign, while low voting-propensity voters willbe more likely to respond to get-out-the vote effortsin high-salience elections. Given my field experimentwas conducted in a low-salience electoral context,I can investigate whether I observe heterogeneoustreatment effects across ranges of subjects’ votingpropensities. With respect to assessing the impact ofgratitude expression, it may also be reasonable toexpect that high-propensity voters who vote regularlyreact differently to efforts that acknowledge theirprosocial behavior, compared to voters who tend tovote with less frequency. To evaluate these possibil-

ities, I conduct a series of analyses in which thetreatments are interacted with subjects’ underlyingvote propensities. I note there is still considerablevariation with respect to overall vote tendency despitethe fact that subjects were selected among those whohad voted in the prior (2005) municipal election.I classify subjects who voted in fewer than half of the10 prior elections I include as ‘‘low propensity’’voters and those who voted in five or more of theseelections as ‘‘high propensity’’ voters. I then dividemy sample, based on these classifications, to inves-tigate the impact of my treatments on each subgrouprespectively.7

I detect scant evidence of heterogeneous treatmenteffects across subjects’ vote propensities. The estimates,also presented in Table 2, suggest the gratitude treat-ment exerted a slightly stronger impact on high-propensity voters, but the difference is not significant;low-propensity voters were also effectively mobilized.8

By contrast, the reminder treatment failed to boostparticipation amongst low- and high-propensity votersalike. I conclude from these findings that gratitude

TABLE 2 Estimates of the Effects of Two Mail Treatments on Voter Turnout in the Staten Island, NYSpecial Election (NYC City Council District 49) Experiment (February 2009)

Model Specifications Vote Propensityb

(Equation 1) (Equation 2) Low High

Base Voting Rate (Turnout %) 10.2 34.6Gratitude Treatment .024* (.011) .030** (.010) .018* (.011) .030* (.016)Reminder Treatment .004 (.022) .009 (.020) -.004 (.024) .004 (.032)N of individuals 10,916 10,916 4,752 6,164Covariatesa No Yes No NoRMSE .427 .390 .302 .476

Notes: Estimates represent intent-to-treat effects derived from OLS regression. Dependent variable is voter turnout in the February 24,2009 special election (NYC Council District 49, Staten Island). Numbers in parentheses represent standard errors. ** signifies statisticalsignificance at the p , .01 level, * at the p , .05 level, using one-tailed tests.aCovariates include: Prior turnout in the 2007, 2006, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001 and 2000 general elections (November) and the 2002, 2006(Congress) and 2008 (presidential) primary elections. See Online Appendix Table 1 for details.bSubjects who voted in fewer than five of the ten prior elections are classified as ‘‘low propensity’’ voters, while those who voted in fiveor more of these elections are considered ‘‘high propensity’’ voters.

7The vote-propensity interaction results I report throughout aremeant to be illustrative, depending on available vote history data,but I note the results are substantively robust to alternative cut-points for baseline propensities to vote. When treatments areinteracted with vote propensity and included in the regressionmodels as interaction terms, they are not statistically significant.Tables available upon request.

8For simplicity, the estimates reported in columns 3 and 4exclude covariates; including covariates does not substantivelyalter the results. Tables available upon request. A similarapproach was adopted for parallel analyses of the other twoexperiments that follow.


expression operates similarly regardless of how fre-quently voters tend to vote in elections.

Experiment 2: New Jersey(November 2009, Gubernatorial

Election)

The results of the initial study described abovesuggest gratitude expression is a potent mobilizingforce, but questions about whether substantivelysimilar effects would obtain in more typical electoralsettings remained unresolved. To assuage these con-cerns, I partnered with a nationally reputable politicalstrategy and direct mail firm and Our CommunityVotes, a national 501 (c)4 organization (both basedin Washington, DC) to conduct a large-scale repli-cation of the initial experiment during the November2009 general election in New Jersey. The electioncycle featured a competitive statewide gubernatorialrace between incumbent Democratic governor, JonCorzine, his Republican opponent, former UnitedStates Attorney for the District of New Jersey, ChrisChristie, as well as Chris Daggett, an Independentcandidate, and nine minor party contenders. Taxhikes and economic stalemate propelled oppositionto Corzine, and preelection polls suggested a tightrace throughout. Ultimately, Christie emerged victo-rious after an intense campaign that attracted 47% ofregistered voters overall on Election Day.9

Against this backdrop, a sample of 41,301 registeredNew Jersey voters who had voted in the November2008 general election, but not in the November 2005election in New Jersey, were randomly assigned to beexposed to a mailing similar to the gratitude treat-ment devised in the original (February 2009) study(see Appendix B for details). The sample was strati-fied to be comprised of about one-third AfricanAmerican, one-third Hispanic, and one-third unmar-ried female subjects. This stratification scheme facil-itates the examination of differences across selectsubgroups of voters (see below). Consistent with theinitial experiment, voters assigned to the treatmentgroup were sent a mailing within the week prior tothe election. Messages were printed in black on plain,white paper, (8½x11 inches) folded in half. A total of11,499 subjects were randomly assigned to receive the

treatment, representing more than a five-fold increasein the number of treatment subjects relative to theinitial study, while 29,802 were assigned to thecontrol group and received no mailing.10 Samplecharacteristics and statistical tests that confirm bal-ance with respect to these traits across experimentalconditions are presented in the online appendix(Table 2).

The experimental results presented in Table 3indicate subjects in the control group voted at rate of36.7% in the general elections, while 39.2% ofsubjects assigned to receive the gratitude treatmentvoted on Election Day. These results imply an intent-to-treat effect of 2.5 percentage points for the grati-tude treatment (p , .01, one tailed), nearly identicalto the estimated 2.4 percentage point effect detectedin the initial experiment. Using regression to estimatethe treatment effect, both with and without the inclu-sion of covariates, in a manner that parallels the appr-oach applied to the initial experiment described above,leaves this estimate essentially unchanged (see Table 4,columns 1 and 2).11 Moreover, Table 4 (columns 3 and4) reveals the estimated treatment effects varies onlynegligibly by past voting, reinforcing the notion ofhomogeneous treatment effects across baseline propen-sities to vote as suggested by the original experiment.Finally, the last four columns of Table 4 show that

TABLE 3 Experimental Results (New Jersey,November 2009)

ExperimentalGroup N

Turnout(%)

Intent-to-treat (ITT)

ALLGratitude Treatment 11,499 39.2 +2.5 (0.5)Control 29,802 36.7BLACKGratitude Treatment 3,833 37.5 +2.7 (0.9)Control 9,934 34.8HISPANICGratitude Treatment 3,833 36.6 +2.6 (0.9)Control 9,934 34.0UNMARRIED WOMENGratitude Treatment 3,833 43.3 +2.1 (0.9)Control 9,934 41.2


9New Jersey Secretary of State, November 23, 2009, available athttp://www.state.nj.us/state/elections/2009results/09general/2009-gen-election-ballots-cast-by-county-112309.pdf.

10Resource limitations precluded to inclusion of a separate,reminder mailing in the New Jersey study, but experimentalevidence that such reminders fail to elevate participation isabundant (Green and Gerber 2008).

11Since randomization took place at the level of the individualvoter, it is not necessary to cluster standard errors.


gratitude expression effectively motivates blacks,Hispanics, unmarried females, and females overallat roughly even rates; even as the impact appears tobe slightly weaker for women overall, the differencesin estimated treatment effects do not differ statisti-cally (at conventional levels) across these subgroupsof voters.

Taken together with the experiment conducted inthe Staten Island, NY special election, the two studiesreveal strikingly consistent estimates of the treatmenteffect for gratitude expression. Moreover, the large-scale study conducted in a high-salience electoralcontext in the 2009 general election in New Jerseysuggests the impact of gratitude expression operatessimilarly in both low- and high-salience electoralenvironments.

Experiment 3: Georgia (July 2010,Primary Elections)

The results of the two field experimental studiesdescribed above provide compelling evidence thatgratitude expression motivates subsequent prosocialactivity (at least in terms of voting), but questionslinger about the underlying mechanisms to whichthese effects may be attributable. One possibility isthat subjects were more responsive to elements in thetreatments that sensitized them to social pressure—for example, the sense of public surveillance signaledby the mention of monitoring voting behaviorthrough official records—rather than to the expres-sion of gratitude.12 After all, a growing literaturesuggests social pressure is a powerful mobilizingagent (Gerber, Green, and Larimer 2008; Green andGerber 2010; Panagopoulos 2010). A more nuancedset of treatments could potentially adjudicate be-tween these possibilities and probe further the activeingredients responsible for triggering the effects Idetect and report above.

I advanced precisely such a replication scheme inthe context of the July 20, 2010, primary electionsthat took place in the state of Georgia. The cyclefeatured contested gubernatorial nomination battlesin both major parties as well as races for U.S. Senateand other nominees for federal and state offices.Despite the competitive quality of several key races,the primary nature of this cycle leads me to considerthis a medium-salience electoral environment, posi-tioning its intensity to be somewhere between the

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2009 special election in Staten Island, NY (low-salience) and the gubernatorial general election inNew Jersey (high-salience). Primaries are open inGeorgia, so all registered voters were eligible toparticipate. In total, 19.2% of registered voters votedin the primary election.13

A total of 77,045 registered voters in single-voterhouseholds residing in two congressional districts(1 and 12) who had voted in the November 2006midterm elections were randomly assigned to receiveone of four postcard mailings during the week priorto the election. Messages were crafted to reflectsomewhat varying degrees of social pressure. Thefirst treatment, designed to mimic original gratitudetreatment as closely as possible, arguably incorporatesmaximal social pressure by noting explicitly thatsubjects’ voting behavior is observable through publicrecords, while a second treatment aims to reducesocial pressure by excluding references to officialrecords. I also devised a third treatment, intendedto ratchet down any social pressure elements evenfurther, that provided only a generic expression ofgratitude to subjects for their attention to politics andfor getting involved in the political process. Toparallel the initial study, a pure, generic remindertreatment was also included.14 (See Appendix C fordetails.) Approximately 2,000 subjects were randomlyassigned to receive each of the gratitude treatments,while 1,001 subjects were assigned to receive thereminder mailing. A total of 70,039 voters wereassigned to the control group and received nomailing. Table 3 in the online appendix confirmsthe experimental groups were balanced with respectto voting in five prior elections.

The overall experimental results presented inTable 5 suggest all three gratitude treatments signifi-cantly elevated turnout in the election, while theeffect of the pure reminder treatment was, as ex-pected, weaker and statistically insignificant. Remark-ably, the estimate of the intent-to-treat effect for thegratitude treatment that mentioned official records(as it did in the previous two studies) was, at2.4 percentage points on average, essentially identicalto the effects detected in the New York and New Jerseystudies. Expressing gratitude without a reference tomonitoring voting behavior via official records exertedan effect of exactly equal magnitude (2.4 percentage

points on average). Perhaps most telling is that theimpact of the generic gratitude treatment, designed tominimize social pressure elements, boosted turnout by3.1 percentage points on average relative to the controlgroup. Overall, however, the effects of all threegratitude treatments are statistically indistinguishablefrom each other, suggesting similar effects acrossvarying degrees of social pressure. These results, alongwith homogeneity in treatment effects across subjects’propensities to vote,15 are corroborated by the regres-sion estimates reported in Table 6. The findingssupport the contention that the treatment effectsI detect are, indeed, driven by subjects’ responsivenessto the expression of gratitude rather than to socialpressure. The results of the experiment conducted inthe context of the primary elections in Georgia alsosuggest gratitude effects generalize to medium-salienceelections.

Discussion

A key advantage of randomized experimentation isthe potential to accumulate experimental evidence,enabling researchers to converge on underlying pa-rameters of interest with greater precision and reli-ability and to illuminate the scope of conditions inwhich effects are likely to obtain. Replication andextension is essential to this updating process and tothe experimental enterprise. In this article, Ireport results from three separate but parallel field

TABLE 5 Experimental Results (Georgia, July2010)

ExperimentalGroup N

Turnout(%)

Intent-to-treat (ITT)

GratitudeTreatment(Official Records)

2,001 39.8 +2.4 (1.1)

GratitudeTreatment (NoMention ofOfficial Records)

2,002 39.8 +2.4 (1.1)

GratitudeTreatment(Generic)

2,002 40.5 +3.1 (1.1)

Reminder 1,001 39.0 +1.6 (1.5)Control 70,039 37.4


13Georgia Secretary of State, Elections Division (Personal corre-spondence with the author, August 3, 2010).

14At the suggestion of an anonymous reviewer, the contents ofthe pure reminder treatment were modified slightly compared tothe initial (Staten Island, NY) study in order to parallel the toneand length of the gratitude treatments more closely. 15Other voter attributes (e.g., race and gender) were unavailable.


experiments conducted in a variety of electoralsettings to examine the impact of gratitude expres-sion on subsequent voting. The findings of all threestudies unequivocally tell a consistent story: votingmay be viewed as a thankless job, but thanking votersevidently makes a surprisingly big difference. Grati-tude can be harnessed effectively to increase turnout.Moreover, gratitude expression appears to operatesimilarly across a range of conditions, mobilizingboth habitual and occasional voters in low, mediumand high-salience electoral environments. The resultsare robust across different model specifications andfor subgroups of voters in the population includingAfrican Americans, Hispanics, and women. Moregenerally, the evidence I present reinforces the notionthat expressing appreciation for prosocial behaviorsubsequently motivates similar action. My findingsalso support the broader conclusion that emotionscan play a key role in stimulating (or inhibiting)prosocial action. The evidence suggests activatingpositive emotional reactions, like feelings of beingappreciated, can effectively prompt citizens to engagein costly, prosocial activities, although the magnitudeof these effects does not appear to be as potent asactivating negative feelings like shame (Gerber,Green, and Larimer 2008, 2010), Nevertheless, myestimate of the mobilizing effect associated with apositive, gratitude-inducing treatment is on par withprevious field experimental research that investigatesthe impact of a different positive emotion—pride—on voter turnout (Panagopoulos 2010). Additionally,

the findings suggest the effect of gratitude expressionis distinct from social pressure; it appears pure,unvarnished expressions of appreciation do notsimply soften the blow of heavy-handed social pres-sure messages but they possess an inherent capacityto promote prosocial action.

From a theoretical vantage point, evidence thatgratitude expression can help to overcome powerfulbarriers to electoral participation is potentially far-reaching. This line of inquiry has the capacity tounleash an abundance of scholarly exploration thatexamines whether people engage in prosocial behav-iors in order to earn the gratitude of others. Sub-sequent research can examine gratitude effects as theyrelate to volunteering, contributing or other politicalactivities. Furthermore, some argue that gratitudeeffects are moderated by the costs and benefitsassociated with altruistic acts (McCullough et al.2001; Trivers 1971), but my findings offer littlesupport for the hypothesis that the impact of grati-tude expression is stronger in high-salience contextscharacterized by lower participation costs and greaterelectoral benefits. Instead, I show gratitude expres-sion exerts similar effects in well-publicized, partisan,and competitive statewide elections as well as in local,special elections in which the costs of participationare, presumably, quite high, and the benefits arecomparatively low. That said, additional researchwould shed more light on the matter. Whethersubjects would remain similarly responsive to grati-tude expression if the practice became routine (if they

TABLE 6 Estimates of the Effects of Four Mail Treatments on Voter Turnout in the July 2010 PrimaryElection (Georgia)

Model Specifications Vote Propensityb

(Equation 1) (Equation 2) Low High

Base Voting Rate (Turnout %) 19.0 54.9Gratitude Treatment (Official Records) .024* (.011) .029** (.010) .031** (.013) .024* (.015)Gratitude Treatment

(Excludes Official Records).024* (.011) .027** (.011) .029** (.013) .030* (.016)

Gratitude Treatment (Generic) .031** (.011) .030** (.010) .021* (.013) .043** (.016)Reminder Treatment .016 (.015) .019 (.014) .018 (.018) .025 (.022)N of individuals 77,045 77,045 37,133 39,912Covariatesa No Yes No NoRMSE .484 .434 .392 .497

Notes: Estimates represent intent-to-treat effects derived from OLS regression. Dependent variable is voter turnout in the July 20, 2010GA primary election. Numbers in parentheses represent standard errors. ** signifies statistical significance at the p , .01 level, * at thep , .05 level, using one-tailed tests.aCovariates include: Prior turnout in the 2008, 2007, and 2004 general elections (November) and the 2006 (Congress) and 2008(presidential) primary elections. See Online Appendix Table 3 for details.bSubjects who voted in fewer than three of the five prior elections noted above are classified as ‘‘low propensity’’ voters, while those whovoted in three or more of these elections are considered ‘‘high propensity’’ voters.


were sent ‘‘thank you’’ notes after every election, forexample) is also an open question.

Noteworthy also is the practical relevance of thefindings reported in this article. Techniques thateffectively mobilize voters with positive appeals de-signed to express appreciation will likely be far moreattractive to policymakers and campaign organiza-tions compared to messages that seek to impel votersto the polls by shaming or other forms of socialpressure—even if the latter may produce largerboosts in turnout. Nevertheless, it is important toacknowledge potential limitations to the currentstudy. Interventions that express gratitude may notalways produce the desired effect, particularly incertain political settings. Some psychologists believegratitude increases proportionally with the benefac-tor’s intentions, and there exists evidence that subjectsare more responsive toward benefactors who helpedthem out of benevolent rather than self-serving mo-tives (Tsang 2006b). It may well be the case that voterswould be resistant to expressions of gratitude bypartisan enterprises, for instance, whose motives couldbe perceived as selfish. Subsequent research is requiredto investigate this proposition directly.

The effectiveness of the gratitude treatment Iuncover in this study also adds to our understandingabout the influence of message content in mobilizationappeals. Recent field experimental studies (Gerber,Green, and Larimer 2008, 2010; Panagopoulos 2010)that harnesses potent, social-psychological forces toeffectively mobilize voters challenge early conclusionsthat variations in message content delivered via mailwere unlikely to yield meaningfully different outcomes(Green and Gerber 2008). Taken together with thisgrowing body of scholarship, the current study re-inforces an updated view that messages may mattermore so than we initially believed and that someappeals are more powerful than others.

Insights from burgeoning field experimental for-ays into investigating the underlying psychologicalmechanisms that foster or hinder prosocial politicalparticipation are useful additions to the extant theor-etical and observational literatures on this importanttopic. There remains much still to learn about howemotions interact with social pressure, social norms,public surveillance and contextual factors to motivatepolitical behavior, and the field experimental para-digm, along with requisite extension and replication,can help to shed light on these questions. Subsequentresearch can examine the impact of triggering differentemotions, using different communication tactics orvarying message sources to investigate more nuancedapproaches.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Donald Green and the Institutionfor Social and Policy Studies at Yale University,Deans John Harrington, Nancy Busch, and MichaelLatham at Fordham University, Hal Malchow, andOur Community Votes for generous support. I amespecially grateful to Donald Green, and to DavidNickerson, Michael McCullough, David DeSteno,Alan Gerber, Kevin Arceneaux, Rich Fleisher, JeffCohen, Joel Rivlin, Bill Russell, the editors, andanonymous reviewers for invaluable comments andsuggestions.

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Costas Panagopoulos is Assistant Professor ofPolitical Science at Fordham University, Bronx, NY10458.


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