Thank You for Voting: Gratitude Expression and

Voter Mobilization
Costas Panagopoulos

Fordham University

Political scientists are increasingly exploring the psychological underpinnings of voting behavior using field
experimental techniques. Research in psychology demonstrates that gratitude expression reinforces prosocial
behavior. This article reports the results of the three randomized field experiments designed to investigate the
impact of gratitude expression on voter turnout. The experiments were conducted in a range of electoral settings,
and the results suggest thanking voters for voting in a previous election boosts participation levels in subsequent
elections. Moreover, the gratitude expression effect I observe appears to be distinct from social pressure and is robust
across subgroups of voters, including minorities and women, and both low- and high-propensity voters.

cholars believe psychological mechanisms shape

effort and behavior (Gollwitzer and Moskowitz
1996). Researchers are increasingly exploring
the psychological underpinnings of political action,
and a consensus is emerging that emotions exert
powerful influence over individuals political attitudes and behavior, including voting (Brader 2005;
Marcus, Neuman, and MacKuen 2000; Neuman et al.
2007). Voting is an example of prosocial behavior, an
action that promotes a collective cause at a personal
cost to oneself. The probability that one voter affects
the outcome is statistically miniscule, while the costs
associated with voting are nonnegligible. Psychologists
claim there exists a special link between emotions and
prosocial acts like voting, arguing that initiating and
guiding goal-orientedincluding prosocialbehavior
is a primary function of emotions (Barrett and Campos
1987; Cosmides and Tooby 2000; Frijda 1986; LeDoux
1996).
Political scientists commonly employ field experimental techniques to study the impact of various
tactics and approaches on voter mobilization (Green
and Gerber 2008). Recent scholarship focuses on
isolating the impact of psychological factors like
emotions on political behavior (Gerber, Green, and
Larimer 2008, 2010; Panagopoulos 2010). A growing
body of field experimental literature suggests both

negative and positive emotions influence electoral

participation. Manipulations that activate feelings of
shame in particular appear to stimulate prosocial
behavior considerably (Bear, Manning, and Izard
2003; Gerber, Green, and Larimer 2008, 2010), but
there is also evidence that positive emotions, such as
pride, have the capacity to motivate prosocial activity
(Panagopoulos 2010; Williams and DeSteno 2008).
This study uses field experimental techniques to
investigate the impact of gratitude expression on
voting behavior, an area of inquiry that has been
almost entirely overlooked by political scientists.1
This article is organized as follows. The following
section summarizes the existing theoretical literature
about gratitude and prosocial behavior, primarily as
it has been advanced by psychologists. The review
allows us to formulate hypotheses about the impact
of gratitude expression on voting. I then describe the
details of three field experiments designed to test the
hypothesis I advance and present the experimental
results in the subsequent sections. The evidence I provide suggests thanking citizens for voting in the past
stimulates their propensity to do so again. Against a
backdrop of a wide range of ineffective mobilization
tactics (Green and Gerber 2008), the findings suggest
surprising generality for this effect. A discussion
about the implications of the experimental results

Data and supporting materials necessary to reproduce the numerical results will be made available via a replication archive at
www.costaspanagopoulos.com upon publication. An online appendix containing supplementary materials can be found at https://
journals.cambridge.org/jop. Financial support for this research was provided by the Institution of Social and Policy Studies at Yale
University and by Fordham University.
The Journal of Politics, Vol. 73, No. 3, July 2011, Pp. 707717
Southern Political Science Association, 2011

doi:10.1017/S0022381611000405
ISSN 0022-3816

707

708
and concluding remarks are presented in the final
section.

Gratitude Expression and Prosocial

Behavior
Gratitude is commonly viewed by psychologists as a
positive emotion that flows from the perception that
one has benefited from the costly, intentional or voluntary act of another person (McCullough et al. 2008,
281). Gratitude was largely neglected by researchers
until the twenty-first century, but studies exploring
gratitudes distinct social causes and effects are now
flourishing (Emmons and McCullough 2003, 2004;
McCullough, Kimeldorf, and Cohen 2008). Scholars
distinguish gratitude from related emotions, like
happiness or feelings of indebtedness (McCullough,
Kimeldorf, and Cohen 2008). Although other positive
emotions, such as happiness or amusement have the
capacity to promote prosocial action, gratitude is
different because it stimulates helping even when it is
costly to the helper (McCullough, Kimeldorf, and
Cohen 2008). Gratitude is also distinct from obligation and indebtedness, sentiments that studies reveal
have different, and often negative, psychological
effects. Psychologists argue that experiencing gratitude motivates beneficiaries to repay their benefactors
(and even to extend generosity to third parties) and
that expressions of gratitude reinforce benefactors for
their generosity and motivate them to continue to act
benevolently. Scholars speculate that gratitude and
gratitude expression are rooted in evolutionary or
adaptive processes and that selection pressures
crafted modern forms of gratitude to facilitate social
exchange (McCullough, Kimeldorf, and Cohen 2008;
Trivers 1971). Gratitude is believed to have evolved
to stimulate both direct, reciprocal altruism (Trivers
1971) as well as upstream reciprocity that involves
passing benefits on to third parties instead of returning benefits to ones benefactors (Nowak and Roch
2006).
There is mounting empirical evidence that gratitude motivates prosocial behavior (Bartlett and
DeSteno 2006; McCullough et al. 2001; Tsang
2006). McCullough et al. (2001) proposed that gratitude reinforces prosocial behavior because expressions
of gratitude (saying thanks, for example) validate
the efforts benefactors put forth on others behalf and
increase the likelihood that benefactors will behave
prosocially again in the future. Such thanking behavior is commonplace in a wide range of settings,

costas panagopoulos
especially by groups or individuals (fundraisers,
volunteer recruiters or peer-reviewed journal editors,
for instance) who rely, typically repeatedly, on selfless, altruistic, or philanthropic behavior. Previous
studies reveal benefactors who are thanked for their
efforts are willing to give more and work harder on
behalf of others when future opportunities arise
compared to benefactors who have not been thanked
(McCullough et al. 2001). Field experimental studies
find that gratitude expression can reinforce kidney
donation (Bernstein and Simmons 1974), volunteering behavior toward people with HIV/AIDS (Bennett,
Ross, and Sunderland, 1996), and more visits from
case managers in a residential treatment program
(Clark, Northrop, and Barkshire 1988; cf. Bono and
McCullough 2006). Lab experiments provide analogous evidence (Clark 1975; Goldman, Seever, and
Seever 1982; McGovern, Ditzian, and Taylor 1975;
Moss and Page 1972). Similarly, in commercial
contexts, Rind and Bordia (1995) find that writing
thank you on a restaurant bill raises servers tips,
and Carey et al. (1976) show that thanking consumers for prior purchases stimulates repeat purchasing
behavior, compared to customers who are not
thanked. McCullough, Emmons, and Tsang (2002)
show that individuals who report habitually experiencing gratitude engage more frequently in prosocial
behaviors than do individuals who experience gratitude less often. Experimental evidence of gratitudes
causal force in shaping prosocial behavior is also
provided by Bartlett and DeSteno (2006, 324). The
authors found strong evidence that gratitude plays an
important role in facilitating costly behavior in a
manner distinct from that of a general positive state
or simple awareness of prosocial norms (Bartlett and
DeSteno 2006). Such results lead McCullough,
Kimeldorf, and Cohen (2008, 282) to speculate that
a beneficiarys expression of appreciation acknowledges to the benefactor that he or she has noticed a
kindness and may be prone to reciprocate when a
future opportunity arises.
In this article, I explore the impact of expressing
gratitude on voting in elections. I implement three
field experiments to test the hypothesis that expressing appreciation to voters for having participated in a
previous election will stimulate their propensity to do
so again in a subsequent election. These are the first
randomized field experiments of which I am aware
designed to investigate the impact of gratitude
expression on voter turnout.
Randomized experiments assign units of observation randomly to treatment and control groups,
a feature that ensures the samples characteristics

gratitude expression and voter mobilization

(observed and unobserved) are similarly distributed.
Randomization thus enhances the likelihood of
obtaining unbiased estimates of causal effects and
facilitates reliable causal inference. Field experiments,
as distinct from laboratory experiments, study the
effects of an intervention within a naturalistic setting
in which subjects are unaware they are taking part in
a study. As such, field experiments are typically
unobtrusive interventions into real-world processes
that do not activate subjects self-consciousness or
related psychological concerns (social desirability or
demand effects, for example) that flow from subjects
knowledge that they are being studied. Field experimentation enjoys a long tradition in political science,
with applications in electoral settings dating as far
back as Gosnell (1927). More recently, scholars have
turned increasingly to randomized field experiments
to isolate the causal impact of various activities on
voter turnout (Green and Gerber 2008).
In the experiments described below, the units of
observation are individuals (registered voters), the
interventions are nonpartisan mailings, and the outcome variable is individual voter turnout in the
election, verified using official public records. I note
that previous field experiments have found only weak
effects from nonpartisan mail interventions; such
treatments appear to boost turnout by less than 0.5
percentage points on average (Green and Gerber
2008). If the active ingredient is rooted in triggering
powerful, psychological mechanisms via the substance
of the appeal, as recent research suggests (Gerber,
Green, and Larimer 2008, 2010; Panagopoulos 2010),
I expect the expression of gratitude by mail would
result in greater effectiveness.

Experiment 1: Staten Island, New

York (February 2009, Special
Election)
The initial field experiment was conducted in New
York City Council District 49, located on Staten
Island, New York, prior to the February 24, 2009
special election to fill a vacancy on the Council.
Special elections are typically low-salience affairs that
attract relatively few competing communications,
making them an ideal laboratory to study the effect
of my intervention. A total of 87,389 registered voters
were eligible to vote in the February 2009 election on
Staten Island, and the election featured a contest between six opponents. Candidates in special elections
in New York City are not permitted to appear on the

709
ballot under established party labels, so the election
was essentially nonpartisan. Ultimately, Kenneth
Mitchell was elected with 40.1% of the vote, while
Deborah Rose received 37.1% of the vote to earn
second place. Overall voter turnout in the special
election was 12.5% among registered voters.
The complete experimental sample was 10,916
registered voters residing in single-voter households
who had voted in the previous (November 2005)
municipal election in New York City. Voters were
randomly assigned to either the control group or to
one of two treatment groups described in the
following section. Voters assigned to the treatment
groups were sent a postcard mailing within the week
prior to the election.
To ensure that random assignment generated
treatment and control groups that were balanced in
terms of observable characteristics, I conducted a series
of randomization checks. The results, provided in the
online appendix (Table 1) present mean turnout levels
for 10 prior elections and confirm the randomization
exercise yielded experimental groups that were balanced with respect to prior voting.2
Subjects assigned to the treatment conditions
received one of two mailings printed on simple,
4x6 white postcards. Both mailings were strictly
nonpartisan. The first treatment simply reminded
voters about the upcoming election and encouraged
them to vote; it incorporated no additional information besides the blandishment to vote. Although there
was a separate control group that received no mailing, the first treatment provides an additional baseline for comparison with the gratitude treatment. As
I note above, I do not expect to find a strong effect
from this treatment. Subjects assigned to the gratitude condition were sent a postcard that thanked
voters for voting in the previous (November 2005)
election and urged to vote in the 2009 special election
(see Appendix A for mailing samples)3. The pure
control group was comprised of 8,540 subjects, while

2
Balance can also be confirmed statistically using multinomial
logit to predict experimental assignment as a function of the 10
covariates. As expected, a likelihood ratio test with 20 degrees of
freedom (10 covariates times two treatments) is nonsignificant
(LR58.66, p5.56). Similar analyses confirm balance for the other
two experiments discussed below; details are not reported but
available upon request.
3

All treatments employed in each of the three experiments I

report in this article invoked notions of civic duty, potentially
confounding the effects of gratitude expression with civic duty.
Even as prior research has showed civic duty appeals delivered via
mail are generally ineffective (Green and Gerber 2008), I
acknowledge this potential limitation.

710
T ABLE 1

costas panagopoulos
Experimental Results (Staten Island, NY,
February 2009)

Experimental Group

Turnout
(%)

Intent-totreat (ITT)

Gratitude Treatment
Reminder
Control

1,978
398
8,540

25.9
23.9
23.5

+2.4 (1.1)
+0.4 (2.2)

Note: Standard errors in parentheses.

398 voters were randomly assigned to receive the

postcard reminder, and 1,978 were assigned to the
gratitude treatment condition. The mailing was
arranged so that subjects would receive the postcards
approximately three to seven days prior to the
election.
Following the February 2009 special election, I
obtained validated voter turnout data from the
official New York City voter file. Table 1 reports
the basic turnout rates for the group of subjects
assigned to each treatment condition. The control
group in the experiment voted at a rate of 23.5%.4
Turnout amongst voters assigned to receive the
reminder postcard was only slightly higher (23.9%),
suggesting a modest turnout boost of 0.4 percentage
points (SE52.2). Subjects assigned to receive the
gratitude treatment voted at a rate of 25.9%, implying an intent-to-treat (ITT) effect of 2.4 percentage
points (SE51.1) on average.5
For more rigorous analysis of the experimental
results, I employ multiple regression (OLS) to obtain
estimates of the treatment effects. This approach
permits the inclusion of control variables to correct
for imbalances between experimental groups due to
chance. I estimate two models: equation (1) expresses
individual voter turnout as a linear function of the
experimental treatment conditions. The results of a
linear regression in which voter turnout (Yi) for
individual i is regressed on dummy variables {D1i,
D2i . . . Dti} denoting each of the treatments (in the
case of the first experiment, two treatments; the
reference category is the control group) are presented
4
Readers are reminded that the experimental sample consisted of
voters who had voted in the 2005 election.
5

I acknowledge that some subjects assigned to be treated may not

have been successfully contacted, but reliable estimates of contact
rates for direct mailings are unavailable. Thus, I report intent-totreat effects throughout, noting these are likely conservative
estimates of the treatment effects. Taking contact rates into
account would only magnify the treatment effects I report.

in the first column of Table 2. This model may be

written simply as:
Yi 5 b0 b1 D1i ::: bt Dti ui ;

where ui represents an unobserved disturbance term.

Equation (2) is embellished to include full batteries of available covariates. The inclusion of covariates is optional, but it may reduce the disturbance
variance and improve the statistical precision of the
estimated treatment effects. The model may be
written as:
Yi 5 b0 b1 D1i ::: bt Dti l1 V1i :::
lt Vti ui

where (l)s represent parameters associated with each

covariate (V), and ui represents an unobserved
disturbance term. The results are presented in the
second column of Table 2.6
The regression results parallel my initial findings.
The estimations reveal that subjects exposed to the
gratitude treatment were effectively mobilized to vote
in the special election, relative to the control group,
while the reminder treatment exerted no appreciable
impact. I note the null effect I detect for the mere
reminder treatment is consistent with a number of
previous get-out-the-vote field experiments that examine the impact of nonpartisan appeals to vote
delivered via mail (Green and Gerber 2008). Estimates of the intent-to-treat effects across the two
specifications are quite robust; the addition of covariates for prior voting in recent elections (Model 2)
adjusts the estimates only modestly. The results imply
the gratitude treatment elevated turnout by 3.0
percentage points on average, an effect that is statistically significant at the p , .01 level. I underscore the
fact that the magnitude of this effect is six times
stronger than what is typical for a nonpartisan mail
intervention (Green and Gerber 2008). Calculating a
90% confidence interval around the estimated treatment effect of 3.0 percentage points generated by
Model 2 reveals the boost in turnout attributable to a
single mailing that expresses gratitude for prior
voting can range from 1.36 percentage points, which
is already nearly three times the impact of an average
piece of mail, to as much as 4.64 percentage points, a
striking effect, relative to previous mail campaigns,
that is roughly on par with the impact of a mailing
designed to exert social pressure by showing voters
6
Because I employ similar procedures to analyze subsequent
studies, they are presented here in greater detail but only
summarized below.

gratitude expression and voter mobilization

T ABLE 2

711

Estimates of the Effects of Two Mail Treatments on Voter Turnout in the Staten Island, NY
Special Election (NYC City Council District 49) Experiment (February 2009)
Vote Propensityb

Model Specifications

Base Voting Rate (Turnout %)

Gratitude Treatment
Reminder Treatment
N of individuals
Covariatesa
RMSE

(Equation 1)

(Equation 2)

Low

High

.024* (.011)
.004 (.022)
10,916
No
.427

.030** (.010)
.009 (.020)
10,916
Yes
.390

10.2
.018* (.011)
-.004 (.024)
4,752
No
.302

34.6
.030* (.016)
.004 (.032)
6,164
No
.476

Notes: Estimates represent intent-to-treat effects derived from OLS regression. Dependent variable is voter turnout in the February 24,
2009 special election (NYC Council District 49, Staten Island). Numbers in parentheses represent standard errors. ** signifies statistical
significance at the p , .01 level, * at the p , .05 level, using one-tailed tests.
a
Covariates include: Prior turnout in the 2007, 2006, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001 and 2000 general elections (November) and the 2002, 2006
(Congress) and 2008 (presidential) primary elections. See Online Appendix Table 1 for details.
b
Subjects who voted in fewer than five of the ten prior elections are classified as low propensity voters, while those who voted in five
or more of these elections are considered high propensity voters.

their own voting records (Gerber, Green, and Larimer 2008) and even other policy interventions like
Election Day registration and vote-by-mail fashioned
to stimulate turnout (Knack 2001); effects of this
magnitude have rarely been encountered in randomized field experiments designed to mobilize electoral
participation using direct mail treatments, even when
subjects have received as many as nine pieces of mail
(Gerber, Green, and Larimer 2008).

Vote Propensity and Heterogeneous

Treatment Effects
Recent studies suggest voting propensity may condition the relationship between efforts designed to
mobilize voters and the decision to vote (Arceneaux
and Nickerson 2009). Arceneaux and Nickerson (2009)
argue that high-propensity voters will be more receptive to mobilization efforts in low-salience elections
in which few voters are either aware of or interested in
the campaign, while low voting-propensity voters will
be more likely to respond to get-out-the vote efforts
in high-salience elections. Given my field experiment
was conducted in a low-salience electoral context,
I can investigate whether I observe heterogeneous
treatment effects across ranges of subjects voting
propensities. With respect to assessing the impact of
gratitude expression, it may also be reasonable to
expect that high-propensity voters who vote regularly
react differently to efforts that acknowledge their
prosocial behavior, compared to voters who tend to
vote with less frequency. To evaluate these possibil-

ities, I conduct a series of analyses in which the

treatments are interacted with subjects underlying
vote propensities. I note there is still considerable
variation with respect to overall vote tendency despite
the fact that subjects were selected among those who
had voted in the prior (2005) municipal election.
I classify subjects who voted in fewer than half of the
10 prior elections I include as low propensity
voters and those who voted in five or more of these
elections as high propensity voters. I then divide
my sample, based on these classifications, to investigate the impact of my treatments on each subgroup
respectively.7
I detect scant evidence of heterogeneous treatment
effects across subjects vote propensities. The estimates,
also presented in Table 2, suggest the gratitude treatment exerted a slightly stronger impact on highpropensity voters, but the difference is not significant;
low-propensity voters were also effectively mobilized.8
By contrast, the reminder treatment failed to boost
participation amongst low- and high-propensity voters
alike. I conclude from these findings that gratitude
7

The vote-propensity interaction results I report throughout are

meant to be illustrative, depending on available vote history data,
but I note the results are substantively robust to alternative cutpoints for baseline propensities to vote. When treatments are
interacted with vote propensity and included in the regression
models as interaction terms, they are not statistically significant.
Tables available upon request.
8
For simplicity, the estimates reported in columns 3 and 4
exclude covariates; including covariates does not substantively
alter the results. Tables available upon request. A similar
approach was adopted for parallel analyses of the other two
experiments that follow.

712

costas panagopoulos

expression operates similarly regardless of how frequently voters tend to vote in elections.

Experiment 2: New Jersey

(November 2009, Gubernatorial
Election)
The results of the initial study described above
suggest gratitude expression is a potent mobilizing
force, but questions about whether substantively
similar effects would obtain in more typical electoral
settings remained unresolved. To assuage these concerns, I partnered with a nationally reputable political
strategy and direct mail firm and Our Community
Votes, a national 501 (c)4 organization (both based
in Washington, DC) to conduct a large-scale replication of the initial experiment during the November
2009 general election in New Jersey. The election
cycle featured a competitive statewide gubernatorial
race between incumbent Democratic governor, Jon
Corzine, his Republican opponent, former United
States Attorney for the District of New Jersey, Chris
Christie, as well as Chris Daggett, an Independent
candidate, and nine minor party contenders. Tax
hikes and economic stalemate propelled opposition
to Corzine, and preelection polls suggested a tight
race throughout. Ultimately, Christie emerged victorious after an intense campaign that attracted 47% of
registered voters overall on Election Day.9
Against this backdrop, a sample of 41,301 registered
New Jersey voters who had voted in the November
2008 general election, but not in the November 2005
election in New Jersey, were randomly assigned to be
exposed to a mailing similar to the gratitude treatment devised in the original (February 2009) study
(see Appendix B for details). The sample was stratified to be comprised of about one-third African
American, one-third Hispanic, and one-third unmarried female subjects. This stratification scheme facilitates the examination of differences across select
subgroups of voters (see below). Consistent with the
initial experiment, voters assigned to the treatment
group were sent a mailing within the week prior to
the election. Messages were printed in black on plain,
white paper, (8x11 inches) folded in half. A total of
11,499 subjects were randomly assigned to receive the

9
New Jersey Secretary of State, November 23, 2009, available at
http://www.state.nj.us/state/elections/2009results/09general/
2009-gen-election-ballots-cast-by-county-112309.pdf.

T ABLE 3

Experimental Results (New Jersey,

November 2009)

Experimental
Group

ALL
Gratitude Treatment
11,499
Control
29,802
BLACK
Gratitude Treatment
3,833
Control
9,934
HISPANIC
Gratitude Treatment
3,833
Control
9,934
UNMARRIED WOMEN
Gratitude Treatment
3,833
Control
9,934

Turnout
(%)

Intent-totreat (ITT)

39.2
36.7

+2.5 (0.5)

37.5
34.8

+2.7 (0.9)

36.6
34.0

+2.6 (0.9)

43.3
41.2

+2.1 (0.9)

Note: Standard errors in parentheses.

treatment, representing more than a five-fold increase

in the number of treatment subjects relative to the
initial study, while 29,802 were assigned to the
control group and received no mailing.10 Sample
characteristics and statistical tests that confirm balance with respect to these traits across experimental
conditions are presented in the online appendix
(Table 2).
The experimental results presented in Table 3
indicate subjects in the control group voted at rate of
36.7% in the general elections, while 39.2% of
subjects assigned to receive the gratitude treatment
voted on Election Day. These results imply an intentto-treat effect of 2.5 percentage points for the gratitude treatment (p , .01, one tailed), nearly identical
to the estimated 2.4 percentage point effect detected
in the initial experiment. Using regression to estimate
the treatment effect, both with and without the inclusion of covariates, in a manner that parallels the approach applied to the initial experiment described above,
leaves this estimate essentially unchanged (see Table 4,
columns 1 and 2).11 Moreover, Table 4 (columns 3 and
4) reveals the estimated treatment effects varies only
negligibly by past voting, reinforcing the notion of
homogeneous treatment effects across baseline propensities to vote as suggested by the original experiment.
Finally, the last four columns of Table 4 show that
10
Resource limitations precluded to inclusion of a separate,
reminder mailing in the New Jersey study, but experimental
evidence that such reminders fail to elevate participation is
abundant (Green and Gerber 2008).
11

Since randomization took place at the level of the individual

voter, it is not necessary to cluster standard errors.

Notes: Estimates represent intent-to-treat effects derived from OLS regression. Dependent variable is voter turnout in the November 2, 2009 NJ general election. Numbers in parentheses
represent standard errors. **signifies statistical significance at the p , .01 level, using one-tailed tests.
a
Covariates include: Prior turnout in the 2006 general elections (November) as well as race, gender, marital status, and partisan affiliation. See Online Appendix Table 2 for details.
b
Only subjects vote history in the November 2006 election was available. Accordingly, I consider subjects who voted in this as high propensity voters, while those who failed to do so are
designated low propensity voters.

38.0
.017** (.006)
29,311
No
.485
34.7
.026** (.009)
13,767
No
.476
35.5
.027** (.009)
13,767
No
.478
.025** (.005)
41,301
No
.484

.023** (.005)
41,301
Yes
.457

28.1
.024** (.006)
27,638
No
.450

56.0
.025** (.009)
13,663
No
.496

41.8
.021** (.009)
13,767
No
.493

Female
Unmarried
Female
Hispanic
Black
Low
(Equation 2)
(Equation 1)

Demographic Attributes
Vote Propensityb
Model Specifications

High

Base Voting Rate (Turnout %)

Gratitude Treatment
N of individuals
Covariatesa
RMSE

T ABLE 4

Estimates of the Effects of the Gratitude Mail Treatments on Voter Turnout in the New Jersey Gubernatorial Election (November 2009)

gratitude expression and voter mobilization

713
gratitude expression effectively motivates blacks,
Hispanics, unmarried females, and females overall
at roughly even rates; even as the impact appears to
be slightly weaker for women overall, the differences
in estimated treatment effects do not differ statistically (at conventional levels) across these subgroups
of voters.
Taken together with the experiment conducted in
the Staten Island, NY special election, the two studies
reveal strikingly consistent estimates of the treatment
effect for gratitude expression. Moreover, the largescale study conducted in a high-salience electoral
context in the 2009 general election in New Jersey
suggests the impact of gratitude expression operates
similarly in both low- and high-salience electoral
environments.

Experiment 3: Georgia (July 2010,

Primary Elections)
The results of the two field experimental studies
described above provide compelling evidence that
gratitude expression motivates subsequent prosocial
activity (at least in terms of voting), but questions
linger about the underlying mechanisms to which
these effects may be attributable. One possibility is
that subjects were more responsive to elements in the
treatments that sensitized them to social pressure
for example, the sense of public surveillance signaled
by the mention of monitoring voting behavior
through official recordsrather than to the expression of gratitude.12 After all, a growing literature
suggests social pressure is a powerful mobilizing
agent (Gerber, Green, and Larimer 2008; Green and
Gerber 2010; Panagopoulos 2010). A more nuanced
set of treatments could potentially adjudicate between these possibilities and probe further the active
ingredients responsible for triggering the effects I
detect and report above.
I advanced precisely such a replication scheme in
the context of the July 20, 2010, primary elections
that took place in the state of Georgia. The cycle
featured contested gubernatorial nomination battles
in both major parties as well as races for U.S. Senate
and other nominees for federal and state offices.
Despite the competitive quality of several key races,
the primary nature of this cycle leads me to consider
this a medium-salience electoral environment, positioning its intensity to be somewhere between the
12

I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer who raised this issue

and encouraged me to address it with further experimentation.

714
2009 special election in Staten Island, NY (lowsalience) and the gubernatorial general election in
New Jersey (high-salience). Primaries are open in
Georgia, so all registered voters were eligible to
participate. In total, 19.2% of registered voters voted
in the primary election.13
A total of 77,045 registered voters in single-voter
households residing in two congressional districts
(1 and 12) who had voted in the November 2006
midterm elections were randomly assigned to receive
one of four postcard mailings during the week prior
to the election. Messages were crafted to reflect
somewhat varying degrees of social pressure. The
first treatment, designed to mimic original gratitude
treatment as closely as possible, arguably incorporates
maximal social pressure by noting explicitly that
subjects voting behavior is observable through public
records, while a second treatment aims to reduce
social pressure by excluding references to official
records. I also devised a third treatment, intended
to ratchet down any social pressure elements even
further, that provided only a generic expression of
gratitude to subjects for their attention to politics and
for getting involved in the political process. To
parallel the initial study, a pure, generic reminder
treatment was also included.14 (See Appendix C for
details.) Approximately 2,000 subjects were randomly
assigned to receive each of the gratitude treatments,
while 1,001 subjects were assigned to receive the
reminder mailing. A total of 70,039 voters were
assigned to the control group and received no
mailing. Table 3 in the online appendix confirms
the experimental groups were balanced with respect
to voting in five prior elections.
The overall experimental results presented in
Table 5 suggest all three gratitude treatments significantly elevated turnout in the election, while the
effect of the pure reminder treatment was, as expected, weaker and statistically insignificant. Remarkably, the estimate of the intent-to-treat effect for the
gratitude treatment that mentioned official records
(as it did in the previous two studies) was, at
2.4 percentage points on average, essentially identical
to the effects detected in the New York and New Jersey
studies. Expressing gratitude without a reference to
monitoring voting behavior via official records exerted
an effect of exactly equal magnitude (2.4 percentage
13
Georgia Secretary of State, Elections Division (Personal correspondence with the author, August 3, 2010).
14

At the suggestion of an anonymous reviewer, the contents of

the pure reminder treatment were modified slightly compared to
the initial (Staten Island, NY) study in order to parallel the tone
and length of the gratitude treatments more closely.

costas panagopoulos
T ABLE 5

Experimental Results (Georgia, July

2010)

Experimental
Group
Gratitude
Treatment
(Official Records)
Gratitude
Treatment (No
Mention of
Official Records)
Gratitude
Treatment
(Generic)
Reminder
Control

Turnout
(%)

Intent-totreat (ITT)

2,001

39.8

+2.4 (1.1)

2,002

39.8

+2.4 (1.1)

2,002

40.5

+3.1 (1.1)

1,001
70,039

39.0
37.4

+1.6 (1.5)

Note: Standard errors in parentheses.

points on average). Perhaps most telling is that the

impact of the generic gratitude treatment, designed to
minimize social pressure elements, boosted turnout by
3.1 percentage points on average relative to the control
group. Overall, however, the effects of all three
gratitude treatments are statistically indistinguishable
from each other, suggesting similar effects across
varying degrees of social pressure. These results, along
with homogeneity in treatment effects across subjects
propensities to vote,15 are corroborated by the regression estimates reported in Table 6. The findings
support the contention that the treatment effects
I detect are, indeed, driven by subjects responsiveness
to the expression of gratitude rather than to social
pressure. The results of the experiment conducted in
the context of the primary elections in Georgia also
suggest gratitude effects generalize to medium-salience
elections.

Discussion
A key advantage of randomized experimentation is
the potential to accumulate experimental evidence,
enabling researchers to converge on underlying parameters of interest with greater precision and reliability and to illuminate the scope of conditions in
which effects are likely to obtain. Replication and
extension is essential to this updating process and to
the experimental enterprise. In this article, I
report results from three separate but parallel field
15

Other voter attributes (e.g., race and gender) were unavailable.

gratitude expression and voter mobilization

T ABLE 6

715

Estimates of the Effects of Four Mail Treatments on Voter Turnout in the July 2010 Primary
Election (Georgia)
Model Specifications

Base Voting Rate (Turnout %)

Gratitude Treatment (Official Records)
Gratitude Treatment
(Excludes Official Records)
Gratitude Treatment (Generic)
Reminder Treatment
N of individuals
Covariatesa
RMSE

Vote Propensityb

(Equation 1)

(Equation 2)

Low

High

.024* (.011)
.024* (.011)

.029** (.010)
.027** (.011)

19.0
.031** (.013)
.029** (.013)

54.9
.024* (.015)
.030* (.016)

.031** (.011)
.016 (.015)
77,045
No
.484

.030** (.010)
.019 (.014)
77,045
Yes
.434

.021* (.013)
.018 (.018)
37,133
No
.392

.043** (.016)
.025 (.022)
39,912
No
.497

Notes: Estimates represent intent-to-treat effects derived from OLS regression. Dependent variable is voter turnout in the July 20, 2010
GA primary election. Numbers in parentheses represent standard errors. ** signifies statistical significance at the p , .01 level, * at the
p , .05 level, using one-tailed tests.
a
Covariates include: Prior turnout in the 2008, 2007, and 2004 general elections (November) and the 2006 (Congress) and 2008
(presidential) primary elections. See Online Appendix Table 3 for details.
b
Subjects who voted in fewer than three of the five prior elections noted above are classified as low propensity voters, while those who
voted in three or more of these elections are considered high propensity voters.

experiments conducted in a variety of electoral

settings to examine the impact of gratitude expression on subsequent voting. The findings of all three
studies unequivocally tell a consistent story: voting
may be viewed as a thankless job, but thanking voters
evidently makes a surprisingly big difference. Gratitude can be harnessed effectively to increase turnout.
Moreover, gratitude expression appears to operate
similarly across a range of conditions, mobilizing
both habitual and occasional voters in low, medium
and high-salience electoral environments. The results
are robust across different model specifications and
for subgroups of voters in the population including
African Americans, Hispanics, and women. More
generally, the evidence I present reinforces the notion
that expressing appreciation for prosocial behavior
subsequently motivates similar action. My findings
also support the broader conclusion that emotions
can play a key role in stimulating (or inhibiting)
prosocial action. The evidence suggests activating
positive emotional reactions, like feelings of being
appreciated, can effectively prompt citizens to engage
in costly, prosocial activities, although the magnitude
of these effects does not appear to be as potent as
activating negative feelings like shame (Gerber,
Green, and Larimer 2008, 2010), Nevertheless, my
estimate of the mobilizing effect associated with a
positive, gratitude-inducing treatment is on par with
previous field experimental research that investigates
the impact of a different positive emotionpride
on voter turnout (Panagopoulos 2010). Additionally,

the findings suggest the effect of gratitude expression

is distinct from social pressure; it appears pure,
unvarnished expressions of appreciation do not
simply soften the blow of heavy-handed social pressure messages but they possess an inherent capacity
to promote prosocial action.
From a theoretical vantage point, evidence that
gratitude expression can help to overcome powerful
barriers to electoral participation is potentially farreaching. This line of inquiry has the capacity to
unleash an abundance of scholarly exploration that
examines whether people engage in prosocial behaviors in order to earn the gratitude of others. Subsequent research can examine gratitude effects as they
relate to volunteering, contributing or other political
activities. Furthermore, some argue that gratitude
effects are moderated by the costs and benefits
associated with altruistic acts (McCullough et al.
2001; Trivers 1971), but my findings offer little
support for the hypothesis that the impact of gratitude expression is stronger in high-salience contexts
characterized by lower participation costs and greater
electoral benefits. Instead, I show gratitude expression exerts similar effects in well-publicized, partisan,
and competitive statewide elections as well as in local,
special elections in which the costs of participation
are, presumably, quite high, and the benefits are
comparatively low. That said, additional research
would shed more light on the matter. Whether
subjects would remain similarly responsive to gratitude expression if the practice became routine (if they

716
were sent thank you notes after every election, for
example) is also an open question.
Noteworthy also is the practical relevance of the
findings reported in this article. Techniques that
effectively mobilize voters with positive appeals designed to express appreciation will likely be far more
attractive to policymakers and campaign organizations compared to messages that seek to impel voters
to the polls by shaming or other forms of social
pressureeven if the latter may produce larger
boosts in turnout. Nevertheless, it is important to
acknowledge potential limitations to the current
study. Interventions that express gratitude may not
always produce the desired effect, particularly in
certain political settings. Some psychologists believe
gratitude increases proportionally with the benefactors intentions, and there exists evidence that subjects
are more responsive toward benefactors who helped
them out of benevolent rather than self-serving motives (Tsang 2006b). It may well be the case that voters
would be resistant to expressions of gratitude by
partisan enterprises, for instance, whose motives could
be perceived as selfish. Subsequent research is required
to investigate this proposition directly.
The effectiveness of the gratitude treatment I
uncover in this study also adds to our understanding
about the influence of message content in mobilization
appeals. Recent field experimental studies (Gerber,
Green, and Larimer 2008, 2010; Panagopoulos 2010)
that harnesses potent, social-psychological forces to
effectively mobilize voters challenge early conclusions
that variations in message content delivered via mail
were unlikely to yield meaningfully different outcomes
(Green and Gerber 2008). Taken together with this
growing body of scholarship, the current study reinforces an updated view that messages may matter
more so than we initially believed and that some
appeals are more powerful than others.
Insights from burgeoning field experimental forays into investigating the underlying psychological
mechanisms that foster or hinder prosocial political
participation are useful additions to the extant theoretical and observational literatures on this important
topic. There remains much still to learn about how
emotions interact with social pressure, social norms,
public surveillance and contextual factors to motivate
political behavior, and the field experimental paradigm, along with requisite extension and replication,
can help to shed light on these questions. Subsequent
research can examine the impact of triggering different
emotions, using different communication tactics or
varying message sources to investigate more nuanced
approaches.

costas panagopoulos

Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Donald Green and the Institution
for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University,
Deans John Harrington, Nancy Busch, and Michael
Latham at Fordham University, Hal Malchow, and
Our Community Votes for generous support. I am
especially grateful to Donald Green, and to David
Nickerson, Michael McCullough, David DeSteno,
Alan Gerber, Kevin Arceneaux, Rich Fleisher, Jeff
Cohen, Joel Rivlin, Bill Russell, the editors, and
anonymous reviewers for invaluable comments and
suggestions.

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Costas Panagopoulos is Assistant Professor of

Political Science at Fordham University, Bronx, NY
10458.

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