WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush may be tapping into solid human
psychology when he invokes the Sept. 11 attacks while campaigning for the
next election, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

Talking about death can raise people's need for psychological security,
the researchers report in studies to be published in the December issue of
the journal Psychological Science and the September issue of the
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

"There are people all over who are claiming every time Bush is in trouble
he generates fear by declaring an imminent threat," said Sheldon Solomon
of Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, who worked on the
study.

"We are saying this is psychologically useful."

Jeff Greenberg, a professor of psychology at the University of Arizona in
Tucson, said generating fear was a common tactic.

"A lot of leaders gain their appeal by helping people feel they are
heroic, particularly in a fight against evil," Greenberg said in a
telephone interview from Hawaii, where he presented the findings to a
meeting of the American Psychological Association.

"Sometimes that may be the right thing to do. But it is a psychological
approach, particularly when death is close to peoples' consciousness."

For their first study, Solomon, Greenberg and colleagues asked students to
think about either their own death or a neutral topic.

They then read the campaign statements of three hypothetical candidates
for governor, each with a different leadership style. One was charismatic,
said Solomon.

"That was a person who declared our country to be great and the people in
it to be special," Solomon, who worked on the study, said in a telephone
interview.

The others were task-oriented -- focusing on the job to be done -- or
relationship-oriented -- with a "let's get it done together" style,
Solomon said.

FEARING DOOM, TURNING TO CHARISMA

The students who thought about death were much more likely to choose the
charismatic leader, they found. Only four out of about 100 chose that
imaginary leader when thinking about exams, but 30 did after thinking
about death.

Greenberg, Solomon and colleagues then decided to test the idea further
and set up four separate studies at different universities.

"In one we asked half the people to think about the September 11 attacks,
or to think about watching TV," Solomon said. "What we found was
staggering."

When asked to think about television, the 100 or so volunteers did not
approve of Bush or his policies in Iraq (news - web sites). But when asked
to think about Sept. 11 first and then asked about their attitudes to
Bush, another 100 volunteers had very different reactions.

"They had a very strong approval of President Bush and his policy in
Iraq," Solomon said.

Solomon, a social psychologist who specializes in terrorism, said it was
very rare for a person's opinions to differ so strongly depending on the
situation.

Another study focused directly on Bush and his Democratic challenger,
Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites).

The volunteers were aged from 18 into their 50s and described themselves
as ranging from liberal to deeply conservative. No matter what a person's
political conviction, thinking about death made them tend to favor Bush,
Solomon said. Otherwise, they preferred Kerry.

"I think this should concern anybody," Solomon said. "If I was speaking
lightly, I would say that people in their, quote, right minds, unquote,
don't care much for President Bush and his policies in Iraq."

He wants voters to be aware of psychological pressures and how they are
used.

"If people are aware that thinking about death makes them act differently,
then they don't act differently," Solomon said. Solomon says he personally
opposes Bush but describes himself as a political independent who could
vote Republican.