Abstract
BACKGROUND: 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. PURPOSE: 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. METHODS: 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. RESULTS: 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. CONCLUSION: 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.