Members of Congress who want to pass health-care reform should sneeze every time they talk about it

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.

The result: of the people who had just witnessed a sneeze up close and personal, 47.8% said that $1.3 billion should be spent on vaccine development. Of the people who had not been a party to the sneeze, 16.7% thought flu vaccines were the way to go.

Score for social determinism! And perhaps for passing health-care reform, too?

Barbara!