The Effect of Emotion Regulation on Turnout Rates Among Youth Voters

This senior thesis attempts to integrate the fields of neuroscience and political science by studying the potential role of emotion regulation in the political activity of young adults in the United States. Prior research found that young adults are neurologically more reactive on average to emotional stimuli than older adults, which corresponds to less capability as a group of successfully managing their emotional responses to an aversive stimulus. Political scientists have studied the reasons why young adults turn out to vote in far smaller numbers than any other age group in American history. Based upon prior research, I hypothesized that presidential elections encompassing more negative rhetoric across all media coverage, resulted in lower turnout rates among youth voters because this age group cannot effectively regulate negative emotion. A functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) meta-analysis was conducted to identify the key differential areas of activation in younger vs. older adults during emotional regulation. Subsequently, the 2000 and 2008 presidential elections in the United States were examined as two individual case studies, paying specific attention to the emotionality of campaign advertisements, negative rhetoric of the media, and mobilization efforts targeted at young adult voters. Findings indicated that there are differences in neurological areas of activation between younger and older adults supporting the notion that older adults more effectively regulate emotional stimuli. In addition, findings imply that the negativity found throughout the 2000 presidential election played an important role in the historically low turnout rates among young voters. Contrastingly, the positive and empowering messages that embodied the 2008 election seemingly overpowered the negative rhetoric, thus resulting in a historically high young adult ­voter turnout. This research expands upon previous youth voter research through the incorporation of neuroscience findings, ultimately opening the door for future research on mobilization of youth voters.