Understanding Voting Behavior: Introducing Involvement-Argument Model for political Voting in presidential Elections

Although studied on political elections are usually done in fields other than Psychology, variables effecting on attitudes and voting behavior are in fact considered to be psychological and hence to be in studied in social psychology. In presidential election, campaigners as advertisers, try to bring up the best possible arguments in order to convince voters that the nominee in question is the best possible choice. Voters, though, get persuaded by the arguments accorded to their own objectives of political participation. These arguments are affected and categorized by their level (high/low) and the kinds orientations of involvement; Outcome Relevant Involvement (ORI) and Value Relevant Involvement (VRI), which in turn constitute the elemments of the Involvement- Argument Model (IAM); Elicits, Devoted, Welfare-seeking, and Fandom. This research is aimed to experimentally verify the model. 152 participants were interviewed in order to find out their argument orientations. Then their level of involvement and it’s kinds were measured using two different scales. A Multinomial Logistic Regression Analysis of dates showed Arguments brought out by would be voters were related to their level and the kind of Involvement with the presidential election outcome. The Model can be used for tailoring political massages released for public. Future studies are strongly suggested