A Closer Look at Eyespot Effects on Voter Turnout: Reply to Matland and Murray

Implicit social pressure, applied via exposure to eyespots in nonpartisan, direct-mail blandishments to vote, has been shown using randomized field experiments to raise turnout in elections. Similar eyespot effects have been observed across a wide range of prosocial behaviors. A series of recent replications conducted by Matland and Murray (2016) have failed to consistently produce statistically significant eyespot effects on voter turnout, however, leading the authors to conclude the effects observed in previous research were likely illusory. In this article, I rebut this claim, arguing that an alternative, more circumspect interpretation of the authors' key results points to a different conclusion that supports the notion that eyespots likely stimulate voting, especially when taken together with previous findings.