The Effect of Thinking Style on Voter’s Visual Attention: An Experimental Study Using Eye Tracker

The use of modern marketing tools, such as neuromarketing, has expanded in recent research, and by considering the numerous investments in the use of these tools in the political elections of developed countries, this tool can play an important role in recognizing and examining voters' preferences. In addition, according to many investigations, considering thinking style of individuals can be the reliable predictor of individual’s decisions and behaviors. In this study, by using eye-tracking tool, researchers aimed to assess the impact of thinking style on visual attention of voters during observation of political advertisements published on social networks. Based on previous researches, thinking style has had great influence on visual attention of individuals. The result show that intuitive thinking style leads in paying more visual attention to the pictures in comparison with the texts as well as paying more visual attention to candidate pictures as opposed to conceptual pictures. Meanwhile, rational thinking style leads in paying more visual attention to texts in comparison with pictures as well as paying more visual attention to the conceptual pictures than the candidate pictures (F>3.5, 0.01<p-value<0.05).