The Politics of Disgust (Cornell)

There's a Jeff Foxworthy joke in here somewhere...

Easily Grossed Out? You Might Be A Conservative!

June 5, 2009 — Are you someone who squirms when confronted with slime, shudders at stickiness or gets grossed out by gore? Do crawly insects make you cringe or dead bodies make you blanch?

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If so, chances are you're more conservative -- politically, and especially in your attitudes toward gays and lesbians -- than your less-squeamish counterparts, according to two Cornell studies.

The results, said study leader David Pizarro, Cornell assistant professor of psychology, raise questions about the role of disgust -- an emotion that likely evolved in humans to keep them safe from potentially hazardous or disease-carrying environments -- in contemporary judgments of morality and purity.

In the first study, published in the journal Cognition & Emotion, Pizarro and co-authors Yoel Inbar of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and Paul Bloom of Yale University surveyed 181 U.S. adults from politically mixed "swing states." They subjected these adults to two indexes: the Disgust Sensitivity Scale (DSS), which offers various scenarios to assess disgust sensitivity, and a political ideology scale. From this they found a correlation between being more easily disgusted and political conservatism.

To test whether disgust sensitivity is linked to specific conservative attitudes, the researchers then surveyed 91 Cornell undergraduates with the DSS, as well as with questions about their positions on issues including gay marriage, abortion, gun control, labor unions, tax cuts and affirmative action.

Participants who rated higher in disgust sensitivity were more likely to oppose gay marriage and abortion, issues that are related to notions of morality or purity. The researchers also found a weak correlation between disgust sensitivity and support for tax cuts, but no link between disgust sensitivity and the other issues.

And in a separate study in the current issue of the journal Emotion, Pizarro and colleagues found a link between higher disgust sensitivity and disapproval of gays and lesbians. For this study, the researchers used implicit measures (measures that have been shown to assess attitudes people may be unwilling to report explicitly; or that they may not even know they possess).

Liberals and conservatives disagree about whether disgust has a valid place in making moral judgments, Pizarro noted. Conservatives have argued that there is inherent wisdom in repugnance; that feeling disgusted about something -- gay sex between consenting adults, for example -- is cause enough to judge it wrong or immoral, even lacking a concrete reason. Liberals tend to disagree, and are more likely to base judgments on whether an action or a thing causes actual harm.

Studying the link between disgust and moral judgment could help explain the strong differences in people's moral opinions, Pizarro said; and it could offer strategies for persuading some to change their views.

"People have pointed out for a long time that a lot of our moral values seem driven by emotion, and in particular, disgust appears to be one of those emotions that seems to be recruited for moral judgments," said Pizarro.

That can have tragic effects -- as in cases throughout history where minorities have been victims of discrimination by groups that perceived them as having disgusting characteristics.

The research speaks to a need for caution when forming moral judgments, Pizarro added. "Disgust really is about protecting yourself from disease; it didn't really evolve for the purpose of human morality," he said. "It clearly has become central to morality, but because of its origins in contamination and avoidance, we should be wary about its influences."

The studies were funded by Cornell.

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Plato's Desktop

Communitech‏@communitech

Heins Q+A: We should not think of mobile computing as a desktop on your tablet. "We've got to think beyond that point." #TLC13

 

The communications theorist Marshall McLuhan observed that “we look at the present through a rear-view mirror”. And that “we march backwards into the future”.  Amen. Remember the horseless carriage?

 

Ah yes, that thing that seems like a carriage, but moves on its own internally combusted power - yet whose oomph is still measured in horsepower.

 

The Internet has been a lot like that - it gets used to do old tasks in a different way before digital natives begin to see the Net not through the lens of past usage needs, but that of its potential.

 

It's no big secret why and how this happens - the bulk of our brain is tasked with storing information and filtering new stimuli through the lens of the familiar.  If it looks like a carriage and moves like a carriage, then surely it must be a carriage?  

 

That's why metaphor works - it allows us to fill in the margins of something unknown without the harder task of grasping something new.  The associative process also allows us to use new tools in old ways - if it's heavy like a hammer and solid like a hammer, you can use it as a hammer.

 

Look at the pictures below - what do you see?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes a cup is just a cup - would these two folk agree?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Does this face look like an Eskimo - or does the Eskimo look like a face?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you look, you can see the face of God all around us - but who created who in their own image?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Optical illusions are created by our brain; not by the world around us, but through our interpretation of it.  Stop-motion animation pictures never moved - our brains simply filled in the gap.  This ability to associate the basic characteristics of differing things is extremely useful.  Particularly in life-or-death survival situations there's value in being able to quickly differentiate potential threats from opportunities or what can be used as a tool/weapon, as needed.

 

Innovation, however, isn't about determining the value of what exists already - it's about creating value-add.  It's a more esoteric skill that isn't necessary for bare-bones living, but the ability to create something new out of things that have come before is fundamental to social and technological evolution.  It's the accumulated whys and what ifs that help us understand the potential of a thing and to combine ideas and create something entirely new. 

 

Like using a horse for transport.  Or using wheels and a platform for transport.  Or better yet, using the horse to pull the wheeled platform so that we are free to do something else, or to do more.  Heck, mabye this new contraption could even carry us.  Presto!  You have both the carriage, specialization and the origin of civilization.

 

Until we evolve out of the limbic brain entirely, the challenge of balancing an understanding of things based on what we know versus identifying their potential applications will continue.  We can weigh the consequences of stigmatizing the unfamiliar versus exploring its advantages when we are calm, focused and in balance.  The more we butt heads, so to speak, between these two cognitive functions, the more polarized we become, leading to an expanded gap between our progressive and conservative selves. 

 

When these two halves are in conflict, not balance, it's like gunning the engine of your horseless carriage while the break is still on - you're expending energy just to stay in place. 

 

It's like politics that way.