Just Disgusting

Easily Grossed Out? You Might Be A Conservative!

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?

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.

All I know for sure is that I'd rather be confronted with slime and crawly insects than read about any more of these types of studies.

HT: Strange Herring

Comments

[Michael]

I'm not so sure, Jerry. Consider:

"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."

So disgust likely evolved to keep us SAFE FROM HAZARDOUS OR DISEASE-CARRYING ENVIRONMENTS. Our natural instincts urge us to flee sexual immorality...there is something to read into there.

[Jerry]

I agree there. Guess I just didn't like the angle.

"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."

The idea that the conservatives are going on feeling and that the liberals are going on "concrete reason" on such an issue seems pretty backwards to me.

Oh well, this study does somewhat explain the "dirty hippie".