POLITICSappear to be the opposite. They want to exclude illegal immigrants
from this country in order to prevent what they fear will be a funda-
mental transformation of their culture. However, harm aversion moti-
vates them to take care of the ones who are here.
William Sullivan, a writer for the conservative publication American
Thinker, noted that in the midst of the debate on immigration, leading
conservative figures were going to the Mexican border to assist church
groups in delivering relief, including hot meals, fresh water, and a trac-
tor trailer filled with teddy bears and soccer balls. Some called it a pub-
licity stunt, but it’s consistent with an overarching approach to life that
emphasizes harm aversion: protect the status quo while protecting indi-
viduals in danger.
In opposite and complementary ways, liberals and conservatives
want to help impoverished immigrants. At the same time, they both
want to keep them away.
WE HAVE WAYS OF MAKING YOU LIBERALIf introducing threats into the environment makes people more conser-
vative, is it possible to make people more liberal by doing the opposite?
Dr. Jaime Napier, an expert on political and religious ideologies, found
that the answer is yes, and it doesn’t take very much prodding. Just as
researchers were able to increase conservatism with the tiny nudge of
putting a hand sanitizer nearby, Dr. Napier was able to make people
more liberal with a simple imagination exercise. She told conservatives
to imagine they had superpowers that made it impossible for them to
be injured. Subsequent testing of political ideology found that they
became more liberal. Reducing feelings of vulnerability, which subse-
quently suppressed H&N fear of loss, allowed dopamine, the agent of
change, to switch on and play a larger role in determining ideology.
What about the act of imagining all by itself? Imagining is a
dopaminergic activity because it involves things that have no physi-
cal existence. Did simple activation of the dopamine system through