The researchers then asked the same people their views on the country's existing health care system. Those within hearing distance of the sneezing actor had far more negative views of health care in America.

This finding was so striking that the psychologists ran another version of the sneezing scenario at a mall. This time, the interviewer himself sneezed and coughed while conducting a survey on federal budget priorities (i.e., should the government spend money on vaccine production or on green jobs?).

Participants were more likely to favor federal spending of $1.3 billion on the production of flu vaccines rather than the creation of green jobs when the experimenter sneezed. Thus, in times of a flu pandemic, "public sneezing has the power to shift policy preferences from other current priorities (i.e., green jobs) to the production of flu vaccines," says Schwarz.

Source: Association for Psychological Science