September 2004: Psychological Study Shows that College Students Gravitate to Bush When Subjected to ‘Mortality Reminders’

Three psychologists, Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenburg, and Tom Pyszcznyski, conduct an experiment on 131 students at Rutgers University. All 131 are registered to vote and say they intend to vote in the upcoming presidential election. A control group registers a 4-1 preference for Democrat John Kerry over President Bush, a Republican—an unsurprising result given the relatively liberal makeup of the student body. However, among the students who are subjected to so-called “mortality reminders”—subliminal flashes of the phrases “911” and “WTC” in between word associations—the preference is 2-1 for Bush. [Unger, 2007, pp. 318; New Republic, 8/27/2007]