Voting is personally costly. It takes time to register and to learn about the candidates' views. On election day, you may need to leave work, stand in long lines or slog through harsh weather, knowing all the while that the chances your individual vote will make a difference among the thousands, or millions cast, are pretty much zero. "The probability that I'll be the deciding vote in the 2008 presidential election is much smaller then the chance that I'll get hit by a car on the way to the polls," says Florida Atlantic University's Kevin Lanning, PhD, paraphrasing an observation made by the late University of Minnesota psychologist Paul E. Meehl. "If we look at it in those terms alone, it appears to be irrational," Lanning says. So why do we bother? Psychologists and political scientists have many theories. Some see voting as a form of altruism, or as a habitual behavior cued by yard signs and political ads. Others say voting may be a form of egocentrism, noting that some Americans appear to believe that because they are voting, people similar to them who favor the same candidate or party will probably vote, too, a psychological mechanism called the "voter's illusion." Self-expression is likely to play a role as well, posits Lanning, who watches voting behavior as a poll worker in Palm Beach County, Fla. In a 2002 election, for example, he saw an ex-felon who repeatedly tried to vote. The man stood in line for an hour with his young children in tow and was turned away twice before voting officials verified that his voting rights had been restored. "It mattered enough for him to go back and so the question is why?" Lanning says. Looking back on the man's persistence, Lanning sees his determination to vote as an affirmative act that underscores his membership in the larger group, he says. "We can think of voting as an expression of the self-concept," he says. "If I'm an American, and Americans vote, then the act of voting is an expression of who I am."
