Psychological Distress and Bias-relevant Thinking During the Jharkhand Elections Among Young Voters

Digital political campaigning in India has expanded rapidly, increasing the likelihood that young voters encounter election-related content routinely across social platforms and messaging groups. The Neurocognitive and mental health correlates of such exposure remain insufficiently characterised, particularly in regional election contexts.

To examine associations between digital political campaigns exposure and election-period psychological distress, and to evaluate whether this distress is associated with bias-relevant thinking dispositions (cognitive reflection, need for cognition and actively open-minded thinking) among young voters in Jharkhand.

A cross-sectional, questionnaire-based survey was conducted with 300 voters aged 18-35 years residing in Jharkhand. Digital political campaign exposure (study-developed multi-dimensional scale), psychological distress (Kessler-10), cognitive reflection (3-item CRT), need for cognition (NCS-18) and actively open-minded thinking (AOT short form) were assessed. Pearson correlations, multiple regression models and bootstrapped mediation analyses were performed with demographic and political interest covariates.

Digital campaign exposure was not associated with psychological distress (r = 0.01; β = 0.02, p = .814). Psychological distress showed a small negative association with cognitive reflection (r = -0.13) and significantly predicted lower CRT scores in regression models (B = -0.03, SE = 0.01, p = .015, where, B: the unstandardized regression coefficient (often called the slope) and SE: the standard error of B), whereas associations with the need for cognition and actively open-minded thinking were non-significant (p > .50). The hypothesised indirect pathway from exposure to thinking dispositions via distress was not supported; bootstrapped confidence intervals for indirect effects included zero for all outcomes.

In this sample, routine digital campaign exposure volume did not predict election-period distress, but higher distress was associated with lower reflective reasoning. Future election-period research should operationalise exposure with greater sensitivity to stress-relevant and problematic engagement features and adopt designs capable of clarifying temporal ordering.