Battered Voter’s Syndrome

By Pixel at November 22, 2006 at 12:03 pm. Filed in 2008 presidential race

Warning: sociopolitical analytical post.
This is part one of a two part series. The question for this post is: “Why don’t Americans vote?” The analysis is broader than the U.S., however and can be applied to any large western country.

Why don’t people vote?

The reasons are many, but they all boil down to lack of time, lack of confidence, lack of information and lack of expectations. In other words, people don’t know the system, don’t have time to know the system, don’t trust the system and don’t think there is any way they can effect the system. Psychologists call this ‘learned helplessness.’

If you take a dog and put him in a room where he is electrocuted and nothing he does can change that, he will learn to accept it and– when there is a chance to change it all– he won’t. Because he has learned to accept that he cannot change anything.
“Learned helplessness” offered a model to explain human depression, in which apathy and submission prevail, causing the individual to rely fully on others for help. This can result when life circumstances cause the individual to experience life choices as irrelevant.
Am I saying that non-voters are depressed? In a certain form of the word, yes. But I liken it to another phenomenon that psychologists equate with learned helplessness. Battered Person’s Syndrome.

Continue reading Battered Voter’s Syndrome…

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