Science or Pseudoscience?

[Angrboda]

I still doubt it, but maybe that is true. I didn't see anything in the link that specifically say that making someone stand closer to a hand sanitizer can influence his or her political opinions.

I don't appear to have paid access to that journal. Here is how it is described in :

"In the first experiment, volunteers were asked to complete a questionnaire on their political attitudes. To do so, they had to either step over a hand-sanitizer or walk down an empty hallway. Results showed that people who were exposed to reminders of cleanliness reported a less liberal and more conservative political orientation than people in the control group. In the second experiment, before being asked to rate their moral approval of various behaviors, some volunteers were exposed to a sign promoting the use of hand wipes to help keep a lab clean. Those who were reminded of physical purity rendered harsher judgments of sexual acts than the control group."

And here is how it is described by Jonathan Haidt in the bestseller, "The Righteous Mind".

"In one of the most bizarre demonstrations of this effect, Eric Helzer and David Pizarro asked students at Cornell University to fill out surveys about their political attitudes while standing near (or far from) a hand sanitizer dispenser. Those told to stand near the sanitizer became temporarily more conservative."[27]

[note 27] - "The first study in this paper, using the hand sanitizer, only asked for subjects overall self-descriptions, and found that subjects called themselves more conservative when standing near the sanitizer. In the second study the authors replicated the effect and showed that reminders of cleanliness and washing made people more judgmental primarily on questions related to sexual purity."