The meta-pattern for reasoning errors is question substitution. A question with an available answer is substituted for the actual query and the answer is translated using intensity matching if the units don't match.

In this case, the subjects were primed to recall the cheers of their football team by the context of a political survey. The question they substituted was, "Does this statement resemble any of the professed beliefs of my political affiliation?"

Their answers were never considered empirically. Most questions never are.