Irritation by Advice? Voting Advice Applications and the Change of Intra-Individual Voting Behavior

The paper deals with the question of how individuals react to cognitive dissonances within the context of voting behavior. This question is of special importance to Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) as they provide the users with information about party positions which might be in conflict with their attitudes towards political issues and parties. Cognitive dissonances do occur when voters receive a voting advice which is inconsistent with their party preference or party identification. The paper explains under which conditions cognitive dissonances will affect voting decisions. We assume that the effect of cognitive dissonances will be moderated by the strength of the party identification. In order to test this expectation the paper uses a laboratory experiment that will be conducted with 100 individuals before the 2014 European Parliament elections. The paper focuses on the theory and research design of the experiment and also covers first empirical results.