Prometheus 6

“To social psychologists and academic political scientists, people’s answers are highly suspect,” wrote Timothy D. Wilson, in an editorial that accompanies the study. “Voters explain their reasons by relying on cultural and idiosyncratic causal theories that may bear little relation to the real reason for their preferences.”

Undecideds May Be More Decided Than They Know
By BENEDICT CAREY

Voters who insist that they are undecided about a contentious issue are sometimes fooling themselves, having already made a choice at a subconscious level, a new study suggests.

Scientists have long known that subtle biases can skew evaluations of an issue or candidate in ways people are not aware of. But the new study, appearing Thursday in the journal Science, suggests that professed neutrality — sitting on the fence — leaves people more vulnerable to their own inherent biases than choosing sides early.

Experts say the findings may help explain why political polls can be so off-base, and why some people make up their minds in the voting booth with little sense of why they pulled the lever yeah or nay, blue or red.

In the study, researchers asked 132 residents of Vicenza, Italy, where they stood on a controversial ballot issue being debated at the end of last year: the expansion of a local United States military base. The voters also performed a computer test, in which they had to quickly categorize words flashing by on the screen as positive or negative; the words were sometimes paired with photos of the military base. By tracking the number of errors and the time it took to answer, the test estimated a person’s implicit positive or negative associations with the base.

The researchers then had the voters come in a week later and found that of the 33 who had declared themselves undecided, 9 now were in favor and 10 were opposed. And their scores on the computer test the previous week predicted which way they would turn, said one of the authors, Bertram Gawronski of the University of Western Ontario.