Beschreibung:
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Referendums allow people to participate in political decision-making. However, they also come with the challenge of presenting complex issues to the electorate in a concise and comprehensible way. In order to simplify the decision-making process, referendum questions are often tailored to <jats:italic>yes/no</jats:italic> response options. In comparison, the UK European Union membership referendum of 2016, in contrast to the 1975 referendum on the same issue, discarded this option, and a verbal and conceptually more complex alternative response option was brought into play (<jats:italic>remain</jats:italic> vs. <jats:italic>leave</jats:italic>). This potentially relevant change in the voting tradition justifies a linguistic consideration of the suitability of the choice of verbs. Verbal response options such as <jats:italic>stay, remain</jats:italic> and <jats:italic>leave</jats:italic> might activate different framing effects due to their underlying etymology. Our goal was therefore to examine whether the choice of verbs can have a biasing effect, which might be the case due to their frame-inherent structure. This investigation attempts, through both a linguistic analysis and an experimental analysis using a version of the Implicit Association Test (IAT), to bridge the research gap between the awareness that there are linguistic factors that can influence decision-making processes and the lack of inclusion of framing effects. Overall, the data of two IAT studies (<jats:italic>n</jats:italic> = <jats:italic>185</jats:italic> and <jats:italic>n</jats:italic> = <jats:italic>355</jats:italic>) suggest that the exact wording of dichotomic response options has the potential to influence response choice based on evaluative associations of the verbs. Specifically, when compared to <jats:italic>leave</jats:italic>, we found relatively more positive evaluation for <jats:italic>stay</jats:italic> than for <jats:italic>remain</jats:italic>. Furthermore - independent of the Brexit referendum - our study raises the question whether verbs are at all suitable to replace <jats:italic>yes/no</jats:italic> response options due to inherent framing effects. This linguistic aspect requires more attention in the design of response options in future referendums.</jats:p>