Social Pressure Explains Ethical Voting: A Methodological Contribution to the Scientific Endeavor in the Social Sciences

Abstract

Models of ethical voting, in which individuals derive intrinsic utility from “doing their part�? by voting in elections, have been proposed as an explanation for the “voting paradox�? (why people vote if the probability of being pivotal is negligible). I show that the set of equilibria of the ethical voting model of Feddersen and Sandroni (2006) is identical to that of a model of social pressure in which only a negligible fraction of individuals are ethical. This has the crucial methodological implication that if people actually vote out of social pressure (as the empirical evidence suggests), then the ethical voting model cannot be falsified: even if the model is false, it will be consistent with any empirical evidence.