Not So Undecided

Still an undecided voter? Your brain may beg to differ.

That’s according to new research by University of Virginia psychologist Brian Nosek and colleagues at the University of Washington and Harvard. According to Nosek, “while undecided voters have consciously said that they are undecided, they unconsciously may have already made a choice."

Nosek and his colleagues have tested more than 25,000 people’s implicit preferences for candidates John McCain and Barack Obama using a special election version of the Implicit Association Test on their research site, Project Implicit.

While 15% of the respondents claimed to be “undecided,” Nosek reports that “many of these same participants show an implicit preference for Obama or McCain.” On average, they admitted feeling “slightly warmer” toward Obama, yet demonstrated an unconscious leaning toward McCain.

The team plans to check in with these undecided voters post-election to see whether implicit or explicit preferences drove their decisions at the ballot box.

(Photo by cdedbdme)