This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science.
For all the millions that are poured into electoral campaigns, a voter's choice can be influenced by the subtlest of signals. Israeli scientists have found that even subliminal exposure to national flags can shift a person's political views and even who they vote for. They managed to affect the attitudes of volunteers to the Israeli-Palestine conflict by showing them the Israeli flag for just 16 thousandths of a second, barely long enough for the image to consciously register.
These results are stunning - even for people right in the middle of the one of the modern age's most deep-rooted conflicts, the subconscious sight of a flag drew their sympathies towards the political centre.
In some ways, it's not surprising. The last decades of experimental psychology have shown us that the our conscious view of the world ...
