From WNYC in New York, this is on the media.

I'm Brooke Gladstone.

And I'm Bob Garfield.

And this week we devote the whole hour to our upcoming quadrenial exercise in participatory democracy

and the attendant efforts of political practitioners at mind control.

It's three weeks before the election.

Do you know where your judgment is?

Because political manipulation is a gavat

that requires two willing partners.

You may not be altogether aware that you are, in fact, dancing.

But more and more, researchers are able to

peer into parts of you otherwise invisible and inaccessible to show that you are performing

the steps in perfect time. For instance, you may believe yourself to be independent.

Are independence really as independent as they say they are

or that they think they are? University of Virginia psychology professor Brian Nosek is one of the

founders of Project Implicit, a test designed to reveal how we really feel. Researchers found that

among self-described independence, two-thirds identified implicitly as either

Republican or Democratic. But the real interest is, does that predict their behavior? And so we had

these independents judge some policy proposals, and we randomly assign the different policies

to be proposed by Democrats or Republicans.

In one case, we had people evaluate two welfare policy proposals.

One welfare plan was relatively generous, and the other welfare plan was relatively stringent.

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