The Relationship Between Ideology and Disgust Sensitivity

The aim of the current paper is to examine the association between ideology and disgust sensitivity. Studying disgust offers an to assess how judgments have evolved over time due to a “gut” sense of danger. This emotion also plays a role in moral judgment: individuals label moral wrongdoings as disgusting which elicits a specific facial expression. For this reason, disgust has recently been found to be a plausible emotion involved in political decision-making. Studies indicate that liberals and conservatives rely on respective moral foundations that influence their choices. Haidt et al. (2009) argue that liberals’ views on morality are based primarily on harm/care and fairness/reciprocity, whereas conservatives’ views on morality show a more even distribution across the foundations, including those endorsed by liberals, as well as ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect and sanctity. Schnall et al. (2008) suggest a causal relationship between feelings of disgust and moral convictions. People often rely on moral reasoning when they do not have an intuitive response or when their intuition is conflicting. The current study examined this complex relationship by assessing disgust sensitivity while simultaneously manipulating emotional state through the use of emotionally disgusting and neutral pictures. Electroencephalographic (EEG) event related brain potentials (ERPs) were used as the primary index of emotional processing. The results indicated a main effect for electrode site location and for picture image, as expected. Results did not show an interaction between disgust sensitivity and ideology, or any mediating factors, suggesting that there may be no statistically significant differences in disgust sensitivity between liberals and conservatives. These results suggest that the core differences between conservatives and liberals may be exaggerated. Limitations and directions for future research are discussed

Psychological and social factors associated with wastewater reuse emotional discomfort

Wastewater reuse (WWR) technology has improved greatly in recent decades and may be an important solution to global water challenges. Nevertheless, several psychological and social barriers to widespread adoption still exist. Negative emotional reactions to WWR, known as the “yuck factor,” have been identified as central to public acceptance. The present study used a large, context-neutral, web-based, U.S. sample (N = 207), to examine factors underlying these negative emotions, here measured as discomfort felt toward WWR. We used a more nuanced measure to isolate what aspects of disgust sensitivity predict discomfort and then explored this relationship in the context of other individual and psychological differences. Being female, having less education, and being particularly sensitive to pathogen-related disgust stimuli, all were factors that were significantly and independently associated with reported discomfort. Mediation analysis showed that women felt greater discomfort because of higher levels of pathogen disgust sensitivity. •We examine relationships between water reuse discomfort and individual differences.•Being sensitive to pathogen disgust stimuli is isolated as underlying discomfort.•Women and those with less education are independently associated with discomfort.•Women's reported discomfort is mediated by pathogen disgust sensitivity