Christopher Bryan designed a study to test the effects of priming individuals to think of themselves in slightly different ways. First, he asked two groups of registered voters to complete questions related to an upcoming election. One group’s survey questions included the verb “to vote”—for example, “How important is it to you to vote?” The second group answered similar questions that included the noun “voter”—such as “How important is it to you to be a voter?” The difference in wording may seem minor, but the results were extraordinary.
