Political Science, Department of
Date of this Version
10-2011
Abstract
Disgust has been described as the most primitive and central of emotions. Thus, it is not surprising that it shapes behaviors in a variety of organisms and in a variety of contexts—including homo sapien politics. People who believe they would be bothered by a range of hypothetical disgusting situations display an increased likelihood of displaying right-of-center rather than left-of-center political orientations. Given its primal nature and essential value in avoiding pathogens disgust likely has an effect even without registering in conscious beliefs. In this article, we demonstrate that individuals with marked involuntary physiological responses to disgusting images, such as of a man eating a large mouthful of writhing worms, are more likely to self-identify as conservative and, especially, to oppose gay marriage than are individuals with more muted physiological responses to the same images. This relationship holds even when controlling for the degree to which respondents believe themselves to be disgust sensitive and suggests that people’s physiological predispositions help to shape their political orientations.
Comments
Published in PLoS ONE 6(10): e25552. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0025552. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0025552
Copyright 2011 Kevin B. Smith, Douglas Oxley, Matthew V. Hibbing, John R. Alford, and John R. Hibbing. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.