This research, reposted at the Not Exactly Rocket Science blog, seems counter-intuitive.
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.
It’s the direction in which attitudes shifted that’s fascinating:
When they were shown the control flag, the High group, as expected answered the on-screen questions with a nationalistic bent, averaging a score of 6. The Low group’s average score was closer to 2.5. However, when both groups saw the subliminal Israeli flag, they both converged to a middle-ground score of 4.
Sixteen milliseconds of exposure to the flag was enough to close the ideological gap between the two groups. In a second experiment, Hassin showed that the flashed flag had the same moderating effect on opinions about Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza. At this point, it’s worth noting that the flags didn’t wield an irresistible mind-altering power. There was still variation in the volunteer’s choices, but the average trend changed in a statistically significant way.
Some people could do with a bang on the head with the flagstaff, instead of subliminal messages.
Off topic – congratulations with new place.