The experimenter shows you the cockroach. The living embodiment of filth, all antennae and legs, is crawling inside a drinking glass. The experimenter removes the roach and in plain view thoroughly washes the glass with a powerful disinfectant.
He fills the glass with water and hands it to you. Do you drink?
Would your answer be different if you were reading this on Free Republic?
A decade’s research says that you probably would drink from that glass but your Free Republic doppelganger probably won’t.
A solid body of evidence from sociologists and psychologists shows that, in general, conservatives have a stronger tendency to feel disgust towards "unclean" things than liberals do and that conservatives are more likely to link cleanliness with moral purity (see here for one review). This disgust reaction is especially strong for bodily functions and for political issues like homosexuality and abortion.
Could it be that conservatives are conservative simply because they are too easily grossed out?
All Things Scabbed And Ulcerous
Disgust is a powerful emotion. The overwhelming, visceral reaction it brings keeps us from eating or even approaching potentially dangerous things like rotten food or corpses. Some things really are inherently harmful. Disgust is a simple, effective mechanism which protects us from them.
As a friend of my used to say, "Shit smells bad because it is bad."
Disgust isn’t a universal reaction among animals. If my dog feels anything like disgust, I see no evidence of it. On walks, seeing something I find disgusting, his first reaction is to eat it. His canine physiology is better at killing decay bacteria than mine is, so what would be deadly to me is simply well-aged to him. And if the morsel turns out to be too well-aged, a dog always has a "Plan B", something which allows me to be disgusted twice by the same item.
The Roach And The Blacksmith
Our disgust reaction is remarkably flexible. Beyond "core disgust" (disgust at the presence of putrid and rotten objects), disgust can be triggered by a wide range of learned stimulus. Things that are common, accepted and normal in one culture are fodder for Fear Factor in another.
Chances are that few of you would eat the roach from the first paragraph. And chances are that few of you would avoid eating with a blacksmith. Yet there are cultures in which they eat roaches like they are potato chips but would have to have the entire house ritually cleansed if a blacksmith entered it.
Because the blacksmith is also the undertaker in these cultures, he is associated with death and therefore is disgusting. We think this is a ridicules superstition and we’re right. But we weren’t raised from birth worrying about evil eyes, spirits and other malevolent forces. When you know about the germ theory of disease, it’s easy for the undertaker to wash his hands and go bowling after work like anyone else.
What about eating the cockroach? Surely that’s inherently disgusting. They are bottom feeding, garbage eaters. They’re filthy. True, but what about another common group of arthropods, the crabs. Bottom feeders? Check. Garbage eaters? Check. Waitress, can I send these crab cakes back?
From Disgust To Morality
The higher mental functions which make us human are all built on older systems which served our primate ancestors. Our sense of morality seems to be either built on or at least closely related to our sense of disgust. The blacksmith example shows that a culture can recruit disgust to enforce judgments which have nothing to do with dangerous biological substances. Disgust loses none of its power in these situations.
Disgust naturally expands to cover social situations. I am disgusted not just when I encounter something disgusting. I’m also disgusted when I see some else doing something disgusting. Biologically, this makes sense. Since diseases spread among groups, the actions and health of one group member can endanger the whole group. If you’re defecating in the well or covered with open sores or consorting with some "unclean" neighboring tribe, you could infect our whole tribe. So you are disgusting.
You hear this in the language of conservatives all the time. The language is morally/purity based, tends to black and white thinking and moral judgments apply to the society as a whole, not just to the conservative or his family. Experimenting on stem cells is just like aborting a fetus, which is just like killing a baby. Gay sex is "unnatural". It makes sense that HIV should be a gay disease because gays themselves are unclean.
Because of the social basis for disgust, an act can be wrong, even if it hurts no one. There can be no victimless crimes when those disgusting acts can spread pestilence through the tribe. Social disgust gives the conservative license to look into your bedroom, at your diet, at where you send your children to school. What you do could make them unclean, so you must be watched closely.
Bioethicist Leon Kass calls this the "wisdom of repugnance’’, an emotional reaction that tells us something is wrong even though it is "beyond wisdom’s power completely to articulate " why it is wrong. Kass's argument is, essentially, that an act's morality can be judged by whether or not it gives Mr. Kass the willies. Not the most solid foundation for a system of morals, but if you equate morality with purity it can work for you.
It should be noted that Kass also headed Bush’s bioethics panel, lead the crusade against stem cell research, has been wrong just about every time he’s proclaimed on something and, famously, called test tube babies "abominations".
One of those abominations was at our house just this afternoon. He was sledding with my son. I should probably have the house ritually cleansed before dinner.
Temperamental Liberalism
Political scientist and author Alan Wolfe describes three facets of liberalism: substantive, procedural and temperamental. A substantive liberal believes in the core values of liberalism; freedom, individual control, personal worth, etc. A procedural liberal thinks that Rule of Law, not Man, produces the best government and values the legal and Constitutional safeguards we’ve put on government.
Temperamental liberalism means being open to the world, willing to explore new ideas and things, to seek out new sensations, foods, novels, sexual activities and anything else. This openness and sense of adventure is one of the things I like most about the people I like to hang out with. When faced with something new, their first reaction is more often, "Yeah, I’d try that." not "Awww, gross!"
When I first saw the research on conservatives and disgust, I thought of Wolfe’s work. It was obvious to me that conservatives must lack temperamental liberalism. They must lack openness.
Yet the Inbar, Pizarro and Bloom article I linked to above says there is scant evidence to support this view. They found that, outside of a fairly narrow range of issues, self-described conservatives are roughly as open to new experiences and sensations as self-described liberals are.
Just goes to show, when you see something that "obviously" supports your views while running down your opponents, it pays to double check it. You’re never easier to fool than when you already think you’re right.
How Do You Argue With Gross?
Disgust has several unfortunate implications for democratic politics. If some people won’t, even can’t, listen to reason because they are too busy puking, how do you get through to them?
Simply put, you can’t. Disgust sensitivity is very stable over a person’s lifetime. Most people aren’t going to wake up one day and suddenly be less easily grossed out. Between that and the well known rightward political drift most people undergo as they age, liberals are fighting a losing demographic battle, at least short term. When your primary opponents are grumpy old people, waiting them out is a long-term guaranteed winner.
Happily, one thing that can work is exposure. Repeated positive exposure to a people, a practice or an idea can overcome the disgust reaction. The integration of the armed forces during WW II and Will and Grace probably did more for civil rights and marriage equality than anything else in history.
And exposure can work for almost anything, no matter how gross. After all that’s how you learned to enjoy eating a wad of goo that came out of a hen’s butt.
Over-easy or sunny-side-up, anyone?
Are You Easily Grossed Out?
Theory predictes that the average Kossak will be less easily grossed out than the average person. Let's find out.
Take the Disgust Scale - Revised test and let us know your score.
I got 18 out of 100. Mother VACL would be proud.