The psychological and socio-political consequences of infectious diseases: Authoritarianism, governance, and nonzoonotic (human-to-human) infection transmission

Abstract

What are the socio-political consequences of infectious diseases? Humans have evolved to avoid disease and infection, resulting in a set of psychological mechanisms that promote disease-avoidance, referred to as the behavioral immune system (BIS). One manifestation of the BIS is the cautious avoidance of unfamiliar, foreign, or potentially contaminating stimuli. Specifically, when disease infection risk is salient or prevalent, authoritarian attitudes can emerge that seek to avoid and reject foreign outgroups while favoring homogenous, familiar ingroups. In the largest study conducted on the topic to date (N > 240,000), elevated regional levels of infectious pathogens were related to more authoritarian attitudes on three geographical levels: across U.S. metropolitan regions, U.S. states, and cross-culturally across 47 countries. The link between pathogen prevalence and authoritarian psychological dispositions predicted conservative voting behavior in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election and more authoritarian governance and state laws, in which one group of people imposes asymmetrical laws on others in a hierarchical structure. Furthermore, cross-cultural analysis illustrated that the relationship between infectious diseases and authoritarianism was pronounced for infectious diseases that can be acquired from other humans (nonzoonotic), and does not generalize to other infectious diseases that can only be acquired from non-human species (zoonotic diseases). At a time of heightened awareness of infectious diseases, the current findings are important reminders that public health and ecology can have ramifications for socio-political attitudes by shaping how citizens vote and are governed.

Pathogen threat increases electoral success for conservative parties: Results from a natural experiment with COVID-19 in France.

“…The effect of COVID-19 threat was robust to adjustment on several potential confounds including prior electoral success of conservative parties. Replicating recent results from Zmigrod et al (2021) and Karwowski et al (2020), we confirmed that pathogen threat effects can translate into real-world political outcomes, extending well-known effects of historical pathogen threats on ideological preferences to ongoing pandemics. With a 1% increase in pathogen threat salience is associated with between .08 to .41% supplementary votes for conservative parties.…”

“…For example, evidence suggests that the 2014 Ebola outbreak did influence electoral preference for conservative candidates during federal elections held later that year (Beall et al, 2016; see Schaller et al, 2017 for a replication). Likewise, historical prevalence of nonzoonotic diseases predicted conservative votes for the 2016 US presidential election (Zmigrod et al, 2021), and research suggests that ideology differently relates to threat sensitivity, with liberals being more sensitive to economic threats and conservatives to pathogen related ones (Fiagbenu et al, 2021) .…”

Of Germs and Culture; Parasite Stress as the Origin of Individualism-Collectivism

“…But an analysis of infectious diseases (split into STD and non-STD infections) and outcomes predicted by PST showed that the effects of pathogenic stress across the states of the USA can be almost exclusively explained by STDs (Hackman & Hruschka, 2013). It has been already found that human-to-human and multi-host transmissible infections (non-zoonotic diseases) account for PST findings and not zoonotic diseases that are only transmitted from animals to humans (O'Shea et al, 2022;Thornhill et al, 2010;Zmigrod et al, 2021). But what type of non-zoonotic infectious disease (e.g., bacterial, viral) and what exact disease (e.g., HIV, tuberculosis) contribute more to the cross-population differences can be explored more thoroughly in future studies.…”

Heightened religiosity proactively and reactively responds to the COVID-19 pandemic across the globe: Novel insights from the parasite-stress theory of sociality and the behavioral immune system theory

“…The parasite-stress theory of sociality proposes that in-group assortative sociality ( Thornhill & Fincher, 2014c ), which is “ preferential association among similar individuals who compose an in-group versus out-group or dissimilar others ” ( Fincher & Thornhill, 2012 ), is valued in areas of high parasite-stress ( Thornhill & Fincher, 2014a ). Empirical research supports the parasite-stress theory of sociality by showing that people in ecological settings of high pathogen risks are inclined to show strong in-group favoritism and out-group dislike ( Fincher and Thornhill, 2012 , Fincher et al, 2008 , Murray and Schaller, 2010 , O'Shea et al, 2022 , Santos et al, 2017 , Thornhill and Fincher, 2014a , Thornhill et al, 2010 , Tybur et al, 2016 , Zmigrod et al, 2021 ). As an anti-pathogen strategy ( Fincher and Thornhill, 2012 , Fincher et al, 2008 ), in-group assortative sociality is related to the behavioral immune system (BIS) ( Thornhill & Fincher, 2014b ), which is a set of cognitive, affective, and behavioral mechanisms for reducing disease threat ( Schaller, 2011 ).…”