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This research investigates how disgust, as a basic human emotion, influences political attitudes toward immigration.

April 19, 2017Open Access

The Behavioral Immune System Shapes Political Intuitions: Why and How Individual Differences in Disgust Sensitivity Underlie Opposition to Immigration

LALene AarøeAarhus University MPMichael Bang PetersenUniversity of Copenhagen KAKevin ArceneauxCentre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Key Points

This research investigates how disgust, as a basic human emotion, influences political attitudes toward immigration.
Conducted a meta-analysis of prior psychological studies on disgust and immigration opposition.
Executed a series of representative tests in the United States and Denmark.
Integrated disgust and the behavioral immune system into models of emotional processing.
Disgust sensitivity significantly predicts opposition to immigration, with consistent outcomes across different cultural contexts.
Cognitive mechanisms linked to disease avoidance are shown to work unconsciously, driving political attitudes.
The study provides insights into the difficulties of achieving peaceful ethnic integration.

Abstract

We present, test, and extend a theoretical framework that connects disgust, a powerful basic human emotion, to political attitudes through psychological mechanisms designed to protect humans from disease. These mechanisms work outside of conscious awareness, and in modern environments, they can motivate individuals to avoid intergroup contact by opposing immigration. We report a meta-analysis of previous tests in the psychological sciences and conduct, for the first time, a series of tests in nationally representative samples collected in the United States and Denmark that integrate the role of disgust and the behavioral immune system into established models of emotional processing and political attitude formation. In doing so, we offer an explanation for why peaceful integration and interaction between ethnic majority and minorities is so hard to achieve.

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