Conservatives are more easily disgusted than liberals
Authors:
Yoel Inbar a;
David A. Pizarro a;
Paul Bloom b
| Affiliations: | a Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA |
| b Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA |
DOI:
10.1080/02699930802110007
Publication Frequency:
8 issues per year
First Published:
June
2009
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Abstract
The uniquely human emotion of disgust is intimately connected to morality in many, perhaps all, cultures (Rozin, Lowery, Imada, & Haidt, 1999b). We report two studies suggesting that a predisposition to feel disgust (“disgust sensitivity”) is associated with more conservative political attitudes, especially for issues related to the moral dimension of purity. In the first study, we document a positive correlation between disgust sensitivity and self-reported conservatism in a broad sample of US adults. In Study 2 we show that while disgust sensitivity is associated with more conservative attitudes on a range of political issues, this relationship is strongest for purity-related issues—specifically, abortion and gay marriage.
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