The Biological Roots of Disgust Sensitivity and Political Cognition

• In Event: The Biological Dynamics of Political Attitudes and Their Measurement

Abstract

Infectious diseases have been deadly threats in human evolutionary history, and people have evolved a number of mechanisms to protect against them including a psychological motivation for disease avoidance that works through the emotion of disgust. This psychological motivation – sometimes referred to as disgust sensitivity – shapes a wide range of social and political cognitions such as attitudes on immigration, homelessness and homosexuality, social trust, personality, political ideology, and vote choice. However, despite the universality of the behavioral immune system and the emotion of disgust, the sensitivity of the behavioral immune system varies across individuals. Yet, we have a limited understanding of the roots of individual differences in disgust sensitivity and their association with social and political cognition. An adaptationist approach to the question of the ultimate causes of disgust predicts that people’s disgust sensitivity depends on the trade-off between the benefits of social exchange and the costs of pathogen exposure (i.e. becoming infected and the severity of the infectious disease). One important indicator of the cost of pathogen exposure is the strength of the biological immune system. If an individual has a weak biological immune system, the potential costs of pathogen exposure are higher as the likelihood of becoming infected increases, and the consequences of infection become more severe. We therefore investigate whether individual differences in the strength of the biological immune system can explain individual differences in disgust sensitivity, and whether disgust establishes an indirect path from the biological immune system to social and political cognition. In doing so, we test the following hypotheses: 1) Individuals with a weak biological immune system will have a higher disgust sensitivity, 2) disgust sensitivity establishes a significant indirect path from the biological immune system to human personality and social trust, 3) disgust sensitivity establishes a significant indirect path from the biological immune system to political attitudes and ideology. We test these hypotheses using a unique Polish sample of 260 individuals aged 18-36 years, for whom we have multiple, over-time indicators of the innate and adaptive biological immune system as well as self-reported survey measures of disgust sensitivity, personality traits, political attitudes, and ideology. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for the understanding of the biological roots of social and political cognition.

Authors

• Lene Aarøe, Aarhus University

• Boguslaw Pawlowski, University of Wroclaw

• Michael Bang Petersen, University of Aarhus