Whacky Politics

President Bush and the Republicans haven't fared well in recent polls. We have a solution:

Whack-a-Mole!

That's one way to look at the results of an online experiment based on this beloved carnival game and conducted by The Washington Post, washingtonpost.com and Shanto Iyengar, director of Stanford University's political communication lab.

About 1,500 people found their way to our Web site to whack away at eight celebrities, eight politicians or eight notorious dictators. (Instead of mashing stuffed animals with a wooden mallet when they popped out of holes in a table, our players clicked on faces that appeared on-screen and then vanished back into boxes.)

Participants also took a survey that asked how they feel about the Republican and Democratic parties and about selected party leaders. To measure the cathartic effect of online whacking, half were questioned before they started pummeling; the other half afterward.

The results suggest that political independents had a significantly less sour view of Bush and the GOP after spending 45 seconds whacking images of Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Fidel Castro and other rogue leaders. (But GOP chairman Ken Mehlman, take note: Versions of our game featuring celebrities including Michael Jackson, Martha Stewart and Britney Spears as well as a panel of pols including Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vice President Cheney produced no such therapeutic effect. The whack-ees apparently have to be international scalawags.) "Independents who played whack-a-dictator expressed less harsh evaluations of the Republican Party and President Bush when they were surveyed after, rather than before, the game (the effect amounted to a 9 percent reduction in negativity toward Republicans)," said Iyengar, who designed the experiment. Our lighthearted game helps explain how real politics is played. "The 'foreign threat' card does seem to alleviate harsh assessments of the Republican Party and President Bush, especially among independents," Iyengar said. "More generally, reminding people of foreign threats may sway them in the direction of greater support for the incumbent administration."

For the record, our players amassed more than 50,000 individual whacks. Cheney, Jackson and Hitler were the favorite targets in their respective panels. As a group, the dictators were the most whacked, narrowly beating out celebs. Politicians finished third. Perhaps people don't hate pols as much as we think?

Hardly. When it came to politicians, our little game became a search-and-destroy mission. Cheney was a whack magnet for Democrats. Clinton (D-N.Y.) got hit hard and often by Republicans.

"Instead of simply maximizing the number of hits on all available targets (the 'equal opportunity' whacking strategy), players sought out targets from the opposing party. This strategy effectively reduces the number of available targets by half, thus lowering the player's total score," Iyengar said.

A complete analysis of the results is available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/richmorin . And while you're there, participate in our new experiment: the News Game .

Heartbreaking News About Good Economy

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Good times can break your heart -- literally, says economist Christopher Ruhm of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

"Heart attack fatalities rise when the economy strengthens," Ruhm writes in an article under review by the journal Demography. "A one percentage point drop in unemployment, representing a modest improvement in macroeconomic conditions, is estimated to raise [severe heart attack] mortality by 1.3 percent, corresponding to more than 2,500 additional deaths per year."

He found that the heart-stopping effects of good times appear to be greater for people age 20 to 44 than for older people, "particularly if the economic upturn is sustained."

But why? Ruhm suggests people work longer hours when times are good, leaving less time for exercise and sleep. People also drink more alcohol during good times. Then there's the increase in smog and traffic congestion.

Ruhm based his conclusions on an analysis of economic and mortality data collected in the 20 most populous states from 1979 to 1998.

Who Would Have Thought?Stylists' Tips, Sad Memories and Smart Daughters

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· "The Effect of Compliments on Tipping Behavior in Hair Styling Salons" by John S. Seiter and Eric Dutson. Paper presented in November at the National Communication Association conference. Utah State University researchers find that female hairstylists received 25 percent bigger tips if they told a customer that "Your hair looks terrific," or "Any hairstyle would look good on you" than if they offered no compliment after finishing a do.

· "With Sadness Comes Accuracy; With Happiness, False Memory" by Justin Storbeck and Gerald L. Clore. Psychological Science, Vol. 16, No. 10. University of Virginia psychologists find that people are better at remembering things when they are sad rather than when they are happy.

· "Sex Differences in Parents' Estimations of Their Own and Their Children's Intelligence" by Adrian Furnham and Katherine Bunclark. Intelligence, Vol. 34, No. 1. British researchers find that fathers and mothers on average think their daughters are smarter than their sons, and IQ tests of their children show they're right.