Neuroscience
- How To Increase Voter Turnout
The political parties don't agree on much but what they do all agree on is that the more people who exercise their right to vote, the better. Psychology can help. A new study shows that phone calls to encourage people to vote can be made more effective...
- Want To Achieve Something? Picture Yourself Doing It From A Third-person Perspective
'Visualise yourself doing it' is a common slice of advice for people seeking to achieve something. But there are two ways of visualising yourself in a scene: from a first-person perspective as in real-life, or from an external perspective, as...
- It's Not The Economy, Actually
"It's the economy, stupid", was Bill Clinton's campaign mantra back in the nineties. Well, no it's not actually. At least not according to a new analysis of British voting behaviour in the 1997 and 2001 general elections. As part of the British...
- Dementia Voting Project
As a follow-up to this week's news about dementia and the voter, I note that the senior author of the JAMA article has a funded project to examine this issue, called the Dementia Voting Project [project website]. According to the site's homepage: ...
- Dementia And The Voter - Part 2
Snips from an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer concerning the JAMA article: Dementia poses challenge when it's time to vote The Philadelphia Inquirer By Stacey Burling INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Posted on Tue, Sep. 14, 2004 Snip: "It's...
Neuroscience
Where You Vote Affects Your Vote
I spotted this little item today in Scientific American:
"Location, location, location. We all know it’s true of real estate. But it may also apply to the ballot box. Because a team of American researchers has found that where people vote affects how they vote. The scientists looked at results from the 2000 general election. In Arizona that year, the ballot included an initiative to raise state taxes to support education. What they found is that people who happened to be voting in a school building were more likely to vote for the proposal than people who voted at a firehouse or a church. Their results appear in the June 23rd issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"And same thing happened in the lab. Subjects were shown a series of images, some of which pertained to schools. Later on, in what they were told was an unrelated experiment, they were asked to vote on funding for education. Folks who’d looked at lockers were more likely to vote yes. Whether voting in a church might affect where people stand on gay marriage or stem cell research remains to be seen. But it’s probably a good thing that more people don’t cast ballots in diners—might make it impossible to get rid of all that political pork."
Seems like quite an interesting study, but I wonder how far subliminal influences can be taken in terms of votes. It makes you wonder if government proposals on education in the UK were voted on in schools rather than in the House of Commons might be beneficial for such measures, what to speak of proposals to do with other issues being voted on in buildings reminiscent of said issue. The sheer weight of history aside, it can't be healthy for successive governments to vote on proposals in the same dusty old building since the 10th Century.
- How To Increase Voter Turnout
The political parties don't agree on much but what they do all agree on is that the more people who exercise their right to vote, the better. Psychology can help. A new study shows that phone calls to encourage people to vote can be made more effective...
- Want To Achieve Something? Picture Yourself Doing It From A Third-person Perspective
'Visualise yourself doing it' is a common slice of advice for people seeking to achieve something. But there are two ways of visualising yourself in a scene: from a first-person perspective as in real-life, or from an external perspective, as...
- It's Not The Economy, Actually
"It's the economy, stupid", was Bill Clinton's campaign mantra back in the nineties. Well, no it's not actually. At least not according to a new analysis of British voting behaviour in the 1997 and 2001 general elections. As part of the British...
- Dementia Voting Project
As a follow-up to this week's news about dementia and the voter, I note that the senior author of the JAMA article has a funded project to examine this issue, called the Dementia Voting Project [project website]. According to the site's homepage: ...
- Dementia And The Voter - Part 2
Snips from an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer concerning the JAMA article: Dementia poses challenge when it's time to vote The Philadelphia Inquirer By Stacey Burling INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Posted on Tue, Sep. 14, 2004 Snip: "It's...