Conservatives are more easily disgusted than liberals

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.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Zachary Burns and Shannon Crater for their help collecting data, and Clayton Critcher, Tom Gilovich, and Jon Haidt for their comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.

Notes

¹This and the subsequent analysis involving religious affiliation exclude the three participants who were Hindu or Jewish.

²This unexpected finding did not replicate in subsequent studies, so we are reluctant to attach much importance to it.