Working Title for the Registered Report: Reward Devaluation of the 2024
U.S. Presidential Election
Abstract
In this study, we will investigate how expectations regarding the
relationship between positivity and negativity may be informing election
choices of leftist, left-wing, progressive, Democratic, and
liberal-identifying individuals. We also aim to refine understanding of
decision-making processes by collecting information about participants’
social identities (e.g., race, class, gender), experiences (e.g.,
activism participation), depression symptoms, and beliefs (e.g.,
political cynicism, social justice orientation). We hypothesize that
participants likely to devalue reward will (I) report having been less
likely and happy to vote for Biden-Harris, but more likely and happy to
vote for Harris and Harris-Walz; (II) report lower felt negativity while
imagining Trump-Vance winning; (III) report having been more likely to
vote third-party before Biden stepped down; and (IV) that political
cynicism will moderate reward devaluation. We outline our plans to
assess our hypotheses via moderation analyses and nonparametric
correlations, as well as propose exploratory analyses.