Brexit or Bremain? A person and social analysis of voting decisions in the EU referendum

The period following the UK’s EU referendum in 2016 foreshadows significant social and political change in the UK. The current research draws on social psychological theories to empirically examine the drivers of voting decisions during the referendum. We report the results of a prospective study using structural equation modelling with data (N = 244) collected just before, and self-reported voting behavior immediately following (N = 197), the EU referendum. We employ a person and social approach to examine the additive roles of worldview, conservatism, social identity, and intergroup threat as predictors of voting intentions and behavior. Results showed that person factors (worldview and conservatism) predicted voting intentions through social factors (European identity and realistic threat), and that intentions predicted behavior. The results highlight the importance of addressing threat-based intergroup rhetoric, and the potential of common ingroup identity to mitigate psychological threat.