In the US, politicians of both parties like to drape themselves in the flag, as do voters of all persuasions - it's on display in the windows, front porches and gardens of Americans everywhere. It's a non-partisan symbol, of course. But a recent study by psychologists at Chicago and Cornell suggests that one party gains disproportionately from the flag's exposure:
We report that a brief exposure to the American flag led to a shift toward Republican beliefs, attitudes, and voting behavior among both Republican and Democratic participants, despite their overwhelming belief that exposure to the flag would not influence their behavior. In Experiment 1, which was conducted online during the 2008 U.S. presidential election, a single exposure to an American flag resulted in a significant increase in participants' Republican voting intentions, voting behavior, political beliefs, and implicit and explicit attitudes, with some effects lasting 8 months after the exposure to the prime. In Experiment 2, we replicated the findings more than a year into the current Democratic presidential term. These results constitute the first evidence that nonconscious priming effects from exposure to a national flag can bias the citizenry toward one political party and can have considerable durability.
Flag Fact: the current US flag was designed by a 17-year-old high school student (as the vexillologists amongst you will doubtless already know).
The Wikipedia article that you link to includes the wonderful fact that the high school student received a B- for his project, which his teacher only raised to an A after Congress adopted the design in 1959. I think the teacher was right the first time. There are better-looking flags out there; one has only to look to Canada to find one.
Posted by: Hal | July 18, 2011 at 06:24 PM