Department of Psychology, School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Kingston University, Kingston, UK.
Department of Psychology, University of Essex, Colchester, UK.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2017 Nov 1;12(11):1758-1765. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsx105.
Pre-electoral surveys typically attempt, and sometimes fail, to predict voting behavior on the basis of explicit measures of agreement or disagreement with a candidate or political position. Here, we assessed whether a specific brain signature of disagreement with one's social values, the event-related potential component N400, could be predictive of voting behavior. We examined this possibility in the context of the EU referendum in the UK. In the 5 weeks preceding the referendum, we recorded the N400 while participants with different vote intentions expressed their agreement or disagreement with pro- and against-EU statements. We showed that the N400 responded to statements incongruent with one's view regarding the EU. Crucially, this effect predicted actual voting behavior in decided as well as undecided voters. The N400 was a better predictor of voting choice than an explicit index of preference based on the behavioral responses. Our findings demonstrate that well-defined patterns of brain activity can forecast future voting behavior.
选举前调查通常试图根据对候选人或政治立场的明确同意或不同意程度来预测投票行为，但有时会失败。在这里，我们评估了对自己的社会价值观不一致的特定大脑特征（即事件相关电位成分 N400）是否可以预测投票行为。我们在英国欧盟公投的背景下研究了这种可能性。在公投前的 5 周内，我们记录了参与者在表达对赞成和反对欧盟声明的同意或不同意时的 N400。我们表明，N400 对应于与个人对欧盟看法不一致的陈述做出反应。至关重要的是，这种效应预测了已决定和尚未决定的选民的实际投票行为。N400 是投票选择的更好预测指标，优于基于行为反应的明确偏好指数。我们的研究结果表明，明确的大脑活动模式可以预测未来的投票行为。
