Thread by @docrussjackson

#THREAD

Smith & Engel showed 120 men a photo of a car. For half the subjects, the photograph showed only the car, whereas for the other subjects a sexually objectified woman features. After examining the picture, participants were asked to evaluate the car on several dimensions.

Those who saw the car with the attractive female next to it rated the car as significantly more appealing & better designed. They also estimated it to be more expensive & faster.

When the authors later asked a subset of the participants of their ratings had been influenced by the presence of the model, 22 out of 23 denied it.

One respondent claimed, “I don’t let anything but the thing itself influence my judgments. The other is just #propaganda.”

Another commented, “I never let myself be blinded by advertising; the car itself is what counts.”

Thus, although the model’s presence clearly altered the participants’ ratings of the car, virtually none believed that he had been affected.

Politicians often take advantage of this unconscious transference of emotions to influence how we vote.

Political ads & messages often prominently feature the national flag, in the belief that the positive emotions aroused by the flag will be transferred to the candidate. 🇬🇧

Ron Hassin studied the voting intentions of American voters in the 2008 Presidential election involving John McCain & Barack Obama.

In a pilot study, the authors asked people whether their voting would be influenced by the presence of a flag.

90% said no. In the main experiment, participants first filled in a questionnaire about their voting intentions. For one group, a small American flag was located in the top left corner of the questionnaire; the control group filled in the same questionnaire, but without the flag.

Then, in the week after the election, the participants were contacted again & asked for which candidate they had voted. 83% in the control group reported voting for Obama, but only 73% of those exposed to the flag did.

A single exposure to the flag as they thought about their views appears to be sufficient to alter how they later voted.

Effects were still apparent when interviewed 8 months later: those who had seen the flag were now significantly more conservative than those who had not.

As in the Smith & Engel study, almost no one in the pilot study believed their views could be altered by seeing the flag, but a single exposure was enough to
change how they voted.

This helps us understand why there are flags everywhere, & why there's been a lurch to the Right.

The horror.