By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush (news - web sites) may be tapping into solid human psychology when he invokes the Sept. 11 attacks while campaigning for the next election, U.S. researchers said on Thursday. Talking about death can raise people's need for psychological security, the researchers report in studies to be published in the December issue of the journal Psychological Science and the September issue of the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. <snip> Greenberg, Solomon and colleagues then decided to test the idea further and set up four separate studies at different universities. "In one we asked half the people to think about the September 11 attacks, or to think about watching TV," Solomon said. "What we found was staggering." When asked to think about television, the 100 or so volunteers did not approve of Bush or his policies in Iraq (news - web sites). But when asked to think about Sept. 11 first and then asked about their attitudes to Bush, another 100 volunteers had very different reactions. "They had a very strong approval of President Bush and his policy in Iraq," Solomon said. <snip> The volunteers were aged from 18 into their 50s and described themselves as ranging from liberal to deeply conservative. No matter what a person's political conviction, thinking about death made them tend to favor Bush, Solomon said. Otherwise, they preferred Kerry. LINK
I definitely agree with this article. Whenever I think about the possibility of Bush being re-elected, the first thing that comes to my mind is death.
