we looked at some very interesting

research that showed ways in which

scientists could actually manipulate

people's political beliefs and make them

either more conservative or more liberal

scientists yeah how ways that you would

be very surprised let me talk about ways

in which they were able to make liberal

people more conservative they took a

bunch of students and they have them

fill out these questionnaires looking at

their political ideology and they could

give them a score how liberal how

conservative they were they invited up

into two groups one group had it fill it

out and there was a hand sanitizer

nearby the presence of the hand

sanitizer made the more conservative the

presence of the hand sanitizer made them

all conservative that's right the other

group there's no hand sanitizer on

average this group filled out their

questionnaire in a more conservative way

than the other group did why is that the

reason is the hand sanitizer is a sign

of threat it reminds you that you are at

risk of becoming infected

it's a tiny subtle intervention but it

reflects a much larger intervention that

we all understand attack make the

country more conservative if there's an

election coming up and there's a attack

around the time of the election the

polls shift in favor of the

Conservatives because when you feel

under threat you say I need to protect

what I have it's when you feel safe you

say let's take some risks let's make the

world a better place

that's dopamine now it's funny is

election seasons in November who did

this study I can't remember

crazy to me now we can do it in the

other direction too so different group

of scientists very similar kind of

questionnaire and they told people

imagine that you have superpowers and

nothing can hurt you I just want you to

spend five seconds just imagining you

have superpowers and nothing can hurt

you

shifts people are more liberal because

it's the opposite you take the threat

away a lot of conservatives have fears

how are immigrants going to change

country how are people who are different

from me going to threaten my way of life

if you can lower those fears they will

become in subtle ways not formatic but

in subtle ways more liberal