520
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2026
520 points (98.5% liked)
Crazy Fucking Videos
9197 readers
769 users here now
Dive into the World of Insane Videos!
Rules
- No hate speech of any kind.
- Content warnings are required in post titles where applicable. Example: [CW: Injury]
- Use your best judgement and mark NSFW posts as such.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
This is a classic hangup. There's literally no possible way you could know this, but you're certain of it. Not only that, but you brought it up when it had nothing to do with anything. Kinda a sign you're fixated on the idea.
Eh. I'm just interested in human psychology, so while you think it had "nothing to do with anything" to you, it did have meaning to me. And it's preposterous to think there's no way to know how human psychology is reflected at the ballot box.
I mean I only made an observation, but it's not like it has no basis in reality. I just think it makes intuitive sense to conclude that individuals who are highly self-absorbed wouldn't necessarily care about a collective, relatively anonymous civic duty like voting. Vain people probably love the *stage *of politics, but they are far less interested in the *chore *of voting.
So I'm not saying vain people AS A WHOLE skip elections. In fact I think the opposite there, that they are likely to be much more vocal in the political sphere. Narcissistic political participation is largely driven by a desire for a captive audience and public recognition. Activities like protesting, posting on social media, or aggressively debating are highly visible. In contrast, the act of voting in a democratic election is intentionally anonymous. An election ballot offers no audience, no applause, and no opportunity to publicly demonstrate superiority.
So when you isolate the physical, logistical act of **voting **from the rest of the political sphere, the behavior of highly vain or narcissistic individuals trends toward disinterest in the process. Vain individuals often possess a grandiose sense of self-importance and believe their direct intervention is required to fix things. The realization that their single vote carries the exact same mathematical weight as millions of other voters can feel insulting to their sense of authority.
Sorry, no.
That's very much not the same thing as the claim you actually made, which was:
And they're both deeply spurious claims to make. Self absorbed assholes absolutely still vote, their reasons for voting (likely, at least. Voter behavior models aren't super reliable) just change from social interests to personal ones.
Bailey
Motte
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
I accept your apology.
If that's the game you got you'd better go back to reddit, nobody here likes incels or sad attempts at trolling.
Do a study on it, have it peer reviewed, publish it and let's see where it goes.
Right now all you have is a hunch based on no data.
...my point exactly?
Are you a psychologist who has studied this for a few years? What observations are you basing this on?
Because what it sounds like to me is that you took a mediocre idea at best and tried to push it past the "hypothesis" stage because it feels right to you. The fact that an attractive woman acting crazy brings perceived shitty voters to your mind does say something about you, but it doesn't really relate to this post at all. You may as well have brought up quantum psychics because you don't think enough attractive people are in that field or something...
The dude said she voted for Trump, that's what brought it to my mind...
No. Do I need to be?
I have eyes that can see, and the ability to read. Political scientists and psychologists have studied this exact topic, so there is data on how physical appearance and vanity impact voter turnout. The research makes a key distinction between people who are generally considered attractive versus people who think they are highly attractive, the former of which is what I think you think my argument is. RE: the former, interestingly, studies (like Peterson and Palmer in 2017) show that attractive people actually vote more because the "halo effect" of being treated well by society gives them high social confidence.
However, the data shifts completely when you look at pure vanity. Recent psychological research found that exceptionally high self-perceived attractiveness directly increases "psychological entitlement", or the belief that a person is inherently deserving of special treatment. When you cross-reference that with political participation data (like a 2020 study by Fazekas and Hatemi), it shows that this specific trait of entitlement drives actual voter turnout down.
SO, while highly vain people might be loud on social media or at protests, they tend to avoid the actual ballot box. Psychologists theorize this is because they dislike the egalitarian nature of waiting in line to cast an anonymous vote that carries the exact same mathematical weight as everyone else's.
So the data does exist, and it supports the idea that vanity and entitlement lead to lower turnout on election day.
To make a bold claim like that and present it as true, absolutely yes you do.