This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science.I'm Karren Hopkin.This'll just take a minute.
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 appeared in the june 23rd issue the of 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 the 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 is 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.
Thanks for the minute for Scientific American's 60-Second Science.I'm Karren Hopkin. |