Disgust versus being Disgusting
20 10 11 - 13:58
The usual suspects in academia cooked up some research that borrows an idea from Jonathan Haidt:
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. - PLOSone
People who do not find disgust in themselves are probably very permissive, which is only beneficial to them if they believe that they are themselves disgusting.
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