Standing near hand sanitizer makes Americans more conservative. So what will Ebola do?

[cali]

To get a sense of how Ebola might be affecting the national electorate, it's worth considering how a simple bottle of hand sanitizer affected students at Cornell University.

In their 2012 paper "Dirty Liberals! Reminders of Physical Cleanliness Influence Moral and Political Attitudes," Erik Helzer and David Pizarro stopped 52 Cornell students in a campus hallway and asked them to take a short survey. But there was a catch. Half the students were asked "step over to the wall to complete the questionnaire." The other half were asked to "step over to the hand-sanitizer dispenser to complete the questionnaire."

The results were startling: the simple reminder of hand sanitizer —  which is, itself, a reminder that disease is everywhere, and you need to be protecting yourself — changed students' self-reported politics. On average, students in the control group rated themselves a 4.93 on a scale where 1 was extremely conservative and 7 was extremely liberal. But students who were cued to think about the hand sanitizer rated themselves, on average, a 4.30  — and the difference held on fiscal, social, and moral issues.

The mere nearness of some hand sanitizer was able "to shift participants' responses toward the conservative end of the political spectrum," Helzer and Pizarro concluded.

The researchers weren't just following up on a hunch. They were building on a rich and unnerving body of evidence that suggests some of our political beliefs run deeper than mere partisanship —  they're evolutionary Jedi mind tricks that help us avoid infectious diseases.

<snip>

http://www.vox.com/2014/10/27/7078021/ebola-will-make-americans-more-xenophobic

[Kalidurga]

1. Well I have seen that here, now I at least understand why.

I have a hunch xenophobia might be counter productive in another way. My hunch is that people in diverse communities handle pathogens better than less diverse communities. I don't think there is a way to test that, not an ethical way anyway. Maybe we can look at history to extrapolate. This might be a start though on helping my theory [link:http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/09/us-wisconsin-idUSTRE7880FP20110909 | In any case I think panic is the second worst thing we can do. The only worst thing is moving to the right even if every fiber of our being finds that move more comforting.

[cali]

3. I'm confused about your use of the word xenophobia in this context

and I don't see how that article is evidence to support your theory. The article says that the researchers found that suburban areas are the healthiest, not urban ones.

Fear, alas, is a prime motivator and the republicans are experts at exploiting fear.

[ZombieHorde]

2. Interesting. nt

[whistler162]

4. Here.....

http://www.ehow.com/how_2049858_make-tinfoil-hat.html

[cali]

5. really? want to explain how this is "tin foil hat" material?

by the way, it's hardly breaking news (well, evidently it is to YOU) that fear tends to benefit republicans/conservatives.

and anyone who doesn't see that they're using ebola as a fear tactic in this election is willfully blind.

[Bluenorthwest]

6. So do you think that unreasoned panic about AIDS is what drove Reagan voters to vote Republican

and to support those wicked policies that allowed tens of thousands to die in the US without any sort of action or word from our government? Were they so deeply afraid of disease that they just felt compelled to vote for Reagan and then for Bush?

[cali]

7. I think it may have played a part, but I thnk this is a much clearer example

I absolutely believe fear is a powerful emotion and motivates people.