Baylor University researchers are trying to make the case that where you vote — the building itself — might influence how you vote.
“In a close election, the place where people vote — a school, a church, a government building — could affect the outcome,” said Baylor psychology and neuroscience Associate Prof. Wade Rowatt.
Baylor researchers said that a growing body of evidence indicates that such priming, which occurs when a stimulus — verbal cue or visual cue from physical surroundings — can trigger different responses and inclinations.
Churches and other buildings associated with a religious group are some of the most common polling places, said psychologist Jordan LaBouff, lead author of a Baylor study on settings and attitudes published online in the International Journal for the Pyschology of Religion.
“The important finding here is that people near a religious building reported slightly but significantly more conservative social and political attitudes than similar people near a government building,” Rowatt said today in a press release.
Those conducting a survey in Maastricht in the Netherlands of diverse individuals from more than 30 countries found that answers from the same types of people varied depending on whether the building in their line of sight was the Basilica of Saint Servatius or Maastricht Town Hall. A similar survey in London was done outside Westminster Abbey and Parliament.
Students from Baylor, a private Christian university in Waco, Texas, surveyed people along pedestrian paths. They didn’t interview people who were headed to churches, just passers-by.
Rowatt noted that a Stanford University study of an Arizona school-funding referendum in 2000 showed that voters marking their ballots in schools were more likely to support a state tax increase for them than those polled in churches or community centers.
“We should look carefully at places where important decisions are made,” LaBouff said.
Electa Draper: 303-954-1276 or edraper@denverpost.com
