This campaign season has been brutal. Many voters are frustrated that after enduring months of negativity and divisive rhetoric, they are left with two candidates that hold zero appeal. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have the highest disapproval ratings ever in a presidential election, but one of them will have to win.
So how to chose? Two University of Michigan researchers studied how people react in such situations when they are force to select one of two choices even when they dislike both. They found that people tend to make a decision based upon who they reject most strongly.
“Imagine there are two undesirable candidates named Tilly and Ron,” the researchers wrote. “Given this ‘two bad choices’ option, voters will be more likely to select Tilly because they reject Ron, rather than select Tilly proactively.”
Professor Aradhna Krishna and post-doctoral research Tatiana Sokolova said this method of decision-making requires voters to use different information than if they were seeking to pick a candidate based upon positive attributes.
“If people select between Clinton and Trump by using rejection rather than choice, then the information they use to make their decisions will be different,” they wrote. “Voters using rejection are more deliberate. They are less likely to be swayed by unimportant information about a candidate that they read or hear on radio, television or Facebook. They may pay less attention to rumors.”
In a study examining what happens when people vote using rejection strategies, Krishna and Sokolova found that they use a broader range of information to make their decision instead of just one piece that sticks out. So voters who are casting their ballot based on rejection will be less likely to focus on Trump’s racist comments about Mexicans or Clinton’s use of a private email server, and instead examine a candidate’s entire range of positions.
The researchers using that method could create a more deliberative and thoughtful electorate.
“In fact, conscientious voters may be well served to actively adopt a rejection strategy for their vote in order to make a choice more deliberately,” Krishna and Sokolova wrote. “Emotional claims will not work. Voters will think carefully about why they want to reject one of the candidates.”