How Would Voters Think? The Effect of Thinking Style on Voter’s Visual Attention Using Eye-Tracker

Abstract

The usefulness of modern marketing tools, such as neuro-marketing, has developed in recent studies. Regarding the numerous investments in using these tools in the political elections of developed countries, this tool can play a crucial role in identifying and analyzing voters' preferences. In addition, based on investigations, considering the thinking style of individuals can be a reliable predictor of a voter's decisions and behaviors. In this study, by utilizing the eye-tracking tool, researchers aimed to evaluate the effect of thinking style on the visual attention of voters during the observation of political advertisements published on social networks. According to previous research, thinking style has had an impact on the visual attention of individuals. A sample of sixty-seven individuals is recruited. The results suggest that having an intuitive thinking style leads to paying more visual attention to the pictures as opposed to the texts and paying more visual attention to candidate pictures compared to conceptual pictures. Meanwhile, having a rational thinking style leads to paying more visual attention to texts in comparison with pictures as well as paying more visual attention to the conceptual pictures than the candidate pictures.