Event-related potential evidence suggesting voters remember political events that never happened

Abstract

Voters tend to misattribute issue positions to political candidates that are consistent with their partisan affiliation, even though these candidates have never explicitly stated or endorsed such stances. The prevailing explanation in political science is that voters misattribute candidates' issue positions because they use their political knowledge to make educated but incorrect guesses. We suggest that voter errors can also stem from a different source: false memories. The current study examined event-related potential (ERP) responses to misattributed and accurately remembered candidate issue information. We report here that ERP responses to misattributed information can elicit memory signals similar to that of correctly remembered old information-a pattern consistent with a false memory rather than educated guessing interpretation of these misattributions. These results suggest that some types of voter misinformation about candidates may be harder to correct than previously thought. © The Author (2012). Published by Oxford University Press.