Three experiments with voter educational material shows that it is possible to motivate behavior by changing the way messages are worded.
They sent alternative voter education flyers to different groups. Some emphasized verbs, urging people to, “Go vote” while others appealed ot their sense of identity with nouns and suggested that they “Be a voter”.
In one experiment, with voters in NJ who had not already voted in the 2009 gubernatorial election, participants in the ‘noun condition’ voted at a rate 10.9% higher (89.9%) than those in the verb condition (79%).
They saw no effect based on age, gender, ethnicity, political orientation, or interest in politics. Turnout in both conditions was higher than the NJ baseline of 47%. This was a large enough difference in turnout to have an impact on the outcome.
The researchers claim that the effects they observed in two of the elections are among the largest they have ever measured in an objective experiment.