Abstract
This study regarded voting behavior as a higher-order decision-making process and examined it in terms of attitudes taken to critical thinking and risk. It first investigated the effect of critical thinking on voting behavior and explored the psychological variables related to it. The study then focused on independent swing voters whose party allegiances changed in two national elections (the 2012 election of the House of Representatives and the 2013 election of the House of Councillors) but who recalled their prior choice. For these purposes, a two-wave online panel survey to voters was conducted. The results suggested that (1) people who think more critically perceived that they voted more correctly and (2) the risk-adverse tendency was lower among independent swing voters.
