By: Barbara Kiviat, Time Inc
Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Here's a little advice for folks pushing health-care reform: sneeze more.

A study due out in the journal Psychological Science finds that when people have just witnessed a sneeze, they're more likely to want to fund federal health initiatives.

Last May, University of Michigan psychologists Spike W. S. Lee and Norbert Schwarz sent an experimenter out to shopping malls and downtown business areas to see if people would rather have the federal government spend $1.3 billion on the production of flu vaccines, or $1.3 billion to create "green" jobs. The experimenter got responses from about 50 people. In about half the cases, she coughed and sneezed once before handing over the questionnaire. In the other instances, she simply handed the form over.

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To read the article, see the time.com website at http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2009/11/02/members-of-congress-who-want-to-pass-health-care-reform-should-sneeze-every-time-they-talk-about-it/