People sometimes perceive social environments as unpleasantly crowded. Previous work has linked these experiences to incidental factors such as being hungry or hot and to the relevance of the social environment for an individual's current goals. Here, we demonstrate that crowding perceptions and evaluations also depend on specific, active threats for perceivers. Eight studies test whether infectious disease threats, which are associated with crowded conditions, increase such reactions. Across studies, pathogen threat made dense social environments seem more crowded and generated more negative affect toward these environments. These perceptions and negative feelings were more influenced by pathogen threat relative to other threats of physical danger. Finally, reactions to pathogen threat affected people's choice of crowded versus uncrowded environments to inhabit. This research suggests that interpretations of social environments depend on the unique threats and opportunities those environments afford to individuals.

Cough, cough. Is that person sick, or do they just have a throat tickle? A growing body of research suggests pathogen threats shape key aspects of human sociality. However, less research has investigated specific processes involved in pathogen threat detection. Here, we examine whether perceivers can accurately detect pathogen threats using an understudied sensory modality—sound. Participants in four studies judged whether cough and sneeze sounds were produced by people infected with a communicable disease or not. We found no evidence that participants could accurately identify the origins of these sounds. Instead, the more disgusting they perceived a sound to be, the more likely they were to judge that it came from an infected person (regardless of whether it did). Thus, unlike research indicating perceivers can accurately diagnose infection using other sensory modalities (e.g. sight, smell), we find people overperceive pathogen threat in subjectively disgusting sounds.

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