The Physiology of Political Participation

Abstract

We obtain measures of the degree to which individual-level electrodermal activity changes when participants sequentially view a full range of positive and negative stimuli and we find that individuals who are physiologically more responsive to the presence of diverse images are also more likely to participate actively in politics. This relationship holds even after the effects of personality traits and traditional demographic variables are controlled, suggesting that certain physiological tendencies are predictive of participation in politics and perhaps of involvement in other higher-order activities.

Keywords: political participation, political physiology, political psychology