Exploring the Motivational Epistemic Correlates of Voting Intentions: The case of the 4th December Referendum proposed by the Italian Government

The present research explores the role of epistemic correlates of voting intentions with respect to the Constitutional Referendum (proposed by the Government) held in Italy on 2016. By combining the motivated-cognition perspective with lay epistemic theory (Kruglanski, 1990), in our study we hypothesized that trust in the Italian Government would determine to vote in favor (vs. against) the Referendum as a function of individuals’ selfascribed epistemic authority (SAEA) and need for cognitive closure (NFC). Our findings showed that Trust in Government significantly predicted voting intentions (i.e., the lower was the trust in Government, the stronger were the intentions to vote against the Referendum), for participants with comparatively higher levels of SAEA and NFC. The main implications for the study of epistemic correlates of voting intentions are discussed, both from a theoretical and pragmatic point of view.