Rejection-based choices discourage people from opting out of voting.

ABSTRACT: Representing the will of voters is challenging when many opt out of indicating their preferences. Such opt-out behavior has been explained by voters lacking a preference and/or disliking their options. We provide evidence for a third account: people opt out of choosing between undesirable candidates because bad options are incongruent with their typical goal of selecting the best one. Using a voting task, we show across two lab-based studies that the tendency to opt out of choices between bad candidates is eliminated when participants are asked to reject the worst candidate. Leveraging our experimental findings, we simulate elections and show that rejection-based voting can produce election outcomes that are more representative of the preferences of the electorate. To validate this predict

SUBMITTER: Su YH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12916904 | biostudies-literature | 2026 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature