The political fallout of air pollution.

This paper studies the effect of air pollution on voting outcomes. We use data from 60 federal and state elections in Germany from 2000 to 2018 and exploit plausibly exogenous fluctuations in ambient air pollution within counties across election dates. Higher air pollution on election day shifts votes away from incumbent parties and toward opposition parties. An increase in the concentration of particulate matter (PM10) by 10 [Formula: see text]g/m[Formula: see text]-around two within-county SDs-reduces the vote share of incumbent parties by two percentage points, which is equivalent to 4% of the mean vote share. We generalize these findings by documenting similar effects with data from a weekly opinion poll and a large-scale panel survey. We provide further evidence that poor air quality leads to more negative emotions such as anger, worry, and unhappiness, which, in turn, may reduce the support for the political status quo. Overall, these results suggest that poor air quality affects decision-making in the population at large, including consequential political decisions.

Control Group Paradigms in Studies Investigating Acute Effects of Exercise on Cognitive Performance-An Experiment on Expectation-Driven Placebo Effects.

Introduction: Many studies report improvements in cognitive performance following acute endurance exercise compared to control group treatment. These cognitive benefits are interpreted as a result of a physiological response to exercise. However, it was also hypothesized that expectation-driven placebo effects account for these positive effects. The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences between expectations for cognitive benefits toward acute endurance exercise and multiple control group treatments. Methods: Healthy individuals (N = 247, 24.26 ± 3.88 years) were randomized to eight different groups watching videos of a moderate, a vigorous exercise treatment or one control group treatment (waiting, reading, video-watching, stretching, myofascial release workout, and very light exercise). Then, they were introduced to three commonly used cognitive test procedures in acute exercise-cognition research (Stroop-test, Trail-Making-test, Free-recall-task). Participants rated the effect they would expect on their performance in those tasks, if they had received the treatment shortly before the task, on an 11-point Likert scale. Results: No significantly different expectations for cognitive benefits toward acute moderate exercise and control group treatments could be revealed. Participants expected significantly worse performance following vigorous exercise compared to following waiting and stretching for all cognitive tests. Significantly worse performance after vigorous exercise compared to after very light exercise was expected for Stroop and Free-recall. For Free-recall, participants expected worse performance after vigorous exercise compared to myofascial release training as well. Conclusion: Our results indicate that expectation-driven placebo effects are unlikely to cause the reported greater cognitive improvements following acute moderate and vigorous endurance exercise compared to following common control group treatments.