Adolescents provide more complex reasons for lowering the voting age than do adults: evidence from national convenience samples
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= 12.5; 50% female; 72% non-Hispanic White) and 16- and 17-year-old adolescents (n = 397; 65% female; 69% non-Hispanic White) concerning judgments and justifications about whether the United States should change the minimum voting age. Justifications for changing the voting age were coded for integrative (i.e., integrating multiple perspectives to form a judgment about changing the voting age), elaborative (i.e., providing multiple reasons to support the same judgment about changing the voting age), and dialectical (i.e., recognizing multiple differing perspectives on changing the voting age) complexity of reasoning. Bayesian regressions indicated that adolescents provided greater integrative and elaborative complexity in their reasoning to change the voting age than adults. Adolescents and adults did not meaningfully differ in their dialectical complexity. Findings are consistent with past research indicating that adolescents possess the cognitive capacity and political knowledge to vote in U.S. elections. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
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Adolescents ages 16-17 showed more integrative complexity and more elaborative complexity in political reasoning compared to adults.
“Using an established method from cognitive science to quantify the cognitive complexity of arguments, the study found that adolescents showed more integrative complexity (i.e., incorporating multiple perspectives into one’s judgment) and more elaborative complexity (i.e., providing multiple reasons to support one’s judgment) compared to adults (Oosterhoff et al., 2022).”
From The role (and limits) of developmental neuroscience in determining adolescents' autonomy rights: The case for reproductive and voting rights (2024) · cites this paper as Oosterhoff et al., 2022
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- Authors
- Oosterhoff, B., Wray-Lake, L., & Harden, K. P.
- Affiliations
- Montana State University (US)
- The University of Texas at Austin (US)
- Venue
- Developmental Psychology
- Published
- 2022-08
- Volume
- 58
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 1574-1584
- ISSN
- 0012-1649 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-0599
- PMC
- PMC10898223
- OpenAlex
- W4280511831
- Cited by
- 7
- References
- 16
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 1
- FWCI
- 4.90
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Developmental Psychology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P2CHD042849)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Youth, Politics, and Society
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Political Theory and Democracy
- Keywords
- voting age, adolescents, political reasoning, reasoning complexity, dialectical reasoning, political knowledge, citizen participation, age of majority
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Bayes Theorem, Female, Humans, Male, Politics, Surveys and Questionnaires, Research Design, United States
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