Disease avoidance and ethnocentrism: the effects of disease vulnerability and disgust sensitivity on intergroup attitudes

Navarrete, Carlos; Fessler, Daniel M. T.

doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2005.12.001

Cited by 520 publications

(553 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…As several theorists have pointed out, disgust plays a strong role shaping a variety of social processes, including prejudice, ethnocentrism, social exclusion, responses to perceived Three domains of disgust 47 stigma, and phobias (Cottrell & Neuberg, 2005;Kurzban & Leary, 2001;Navarrete & Fessler, 2006;Olatunji & Sawchuk, 2005;Pryor, Reeder, Yeadon, & Hesson-McInnis, 2004). For this role to be fully understood, it is important to clarify the processes regulating each functional domain of disgust because different social attitudes and behaviors may stem from decision-rules specific to each domain.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microbes, mating, and morality: Individual differences in three functional domains of disgust.

Tybur¹,

Lieberman²,

Griskevicius³

2009

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

955

1,184

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What is the function of disgust? Whereas traditional models have suggested that disgust serves to protect the self or neutralize reminders of our animal nature, an evolutionary perspective suggests that disgust functions to solve 3 qualitatively different adaptive problems related to pathogen avoidance, mate choice, and social interaction. The authors investigated this 3-domain model of disgust across 4 studies and examined how sensitivity to these functional domains relates to individual differences in other psychological constructs. Consistent with their predictions, factor analyses demonstrated that disgust sensitivity partitions into domains related to pathogens, sexuality, and morality. Further, sensitivity to the 3 domains showed predictable differentiation based on sex, perceived vulnerability to disease, psychopathic tendencies, and Big 5 personality traits. In exploring these 3 domains of disgust, the authors introduce a new measure of disgust sensitivity. Appreciation of the functional heterogeneity of disgust has important implications for research on individual differences in disgust sensitivity, emotion, clinical impairments, and neuroscience.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microbes, mating, and morality: Individual differences in three functional domains of disgust.

Tybur¹,

Lieberman²,

Griskevicius³

2009

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

955

1,184

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…It has been proposed that animals may also have evolved a behavioral immune system -a set of behavioral mechanisms that facilitate the avoidance of pathogens (Curtis & Biran, 2001;Kurzban & Leary, 2001;Loehle, 1995;Schaller & Park, 2011). At the psychological level, perceived disease threat reduces self-perceived extraversion (Mortensen, Becker, Ackerman, Neuberg, & Kenrick, 2010), and enhances xenophobia and ethnocentrism (Faulkner, Schaller, Park, & Duncan, 2004;Navarrete & Fessler, 2006), negative attitudes toward physically nonnormative individuals (Park, Faulkner, & Schaller, 2003), intentions to use condoms (Tybur, Bryan, Magnan, & Caldwell Hooper, 2011), and perceived danger of disease-related animals Morals USA 7 (Prokop, Usak, & Fančovičová, 2010). A meta-analysis of 24 studies indicated that disgust sensitivity and fear of contamination predict many forms of social conservatism, such as right-wing authoritarianism and collectivism (Terrizzi, Shook, & McDaniel, 2013).…”

Section: Pathogen Prevalencementioning

confidence: 99%

Moral concerns across the United States: associations with life-history variables, pathogen prevalence, urbanization, cognitive ability, and social class

Leeuwen

Koenig

Graham

et al. 2014

Evolution and Human Behavior

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“…For example, both xenophobia and ethnocentrism within individuals increase under experimental primes of greater disease salience in the current environment [7,10]. A related study reported that research subjects who observed slides of people with disease symptoms immediately mounted a classical immune response.…”

Section: Parasite-stress Theory Of Valuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parasite stress promotes homicide and child maltreatment

Thornhill

Fincher

2011

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Researchers using the parasite-stress theory of human values have discovered many cross-cultural behavioural patterns that inform a range of scholarly disciplines. Here, we apply the theory to major categories of interpersonal violence, and the empirical findings are supportive. We hypothesize that the collectivism evoked by high parasite stress is a cause of adult-on-adult interpersonal violence. Across the US states, parasite stress and collectivism each positively predicts rates of men's and women's slaying of a romantic partner, as well as the rate of male-honour homicide and of the motivationally similar felony-related homicide. Of these four types of homicide, wealth inequality has an independent effect only on rates of male-honour and felony-related homicide. Parasite stress and collectivism also positively predict cross-national homicide rates. Child maltreatment by caretakers is caused, in part, by divestment in offspring of low phenotypic quality, and high parasite stress produces more such offspring than low parasite stress. Rates of each of two categories of the child maltreatment-lethal and non-lethal-across the US states are predicted positively by parasite stress, with wealth inequality and collectivism having limited effects. Parasite stress may be the strongest predictor of interpersonal violence to date.

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Disease avoidance and ethnocentrism: the effects of disease vulnerability and disgust sensitivity on intergroup attitudes

Cited by 520 publications

References 17 publications

Microbes, mating, and morality: Individual differences in three functional domains of disgust.

Microbes, mating, and morality: Individual differences in three functional domains of disgust.

Moral concerns across the United States: associations with life-history variables, pathogen prevalence, urbanization, cognitive ability, and social class

Parasite stress promotes homicide and child maltreatment

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