
Disgust Sensitivity and the Neurophysiology of Left-Right Political Orientations - rbanffy
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0025552
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louprado
Disgust is a challenging emotion to study because it is so intertwined in the
brain. Moral "disgust" activates the same region as the "man eating a can of
worms" example in the article. It activates the same facial expression. Even
our language fails to separate the emotions at times as dis- _gust_ (i.e.,
gustatory) can be in reference to disgusting behavior. VS Ramachandran
discussed this in a lecture but I can't find a link.

Oddly before opening the article I had assumed it was about how moral
"disgust" is positively correlated with left-leaning. But then the study was
referring to digestive disgust which appears positively correlated with right-
leaning.

Side note, the most disgusted I recall feeling in both senses of the word was
hearing a military leader describe a delicious a piece of chocolate cake while
simultaneously describing the bombing he ordered on a foreign country. He
could describe the cake in great detail but he forgot what country we had
bombed the previous day. My right leaning friends didn't see this as a big
deal.

As an extra data point, I have eaten worms on a survival trip and was fine
with it and I never really liked chocolate cake. So maybe this line of
research has merit.

~~~
BeetleB
>Oddly before opening the article I had assumed it was about how moral
"disgust" is positively correlated with left-leaning. But then the study was
referring to digestive disgust which appears positively correlated with right-
leaning.

Actually, even moral disgust is positively correlated with right leaning
folks. The Righteous Mind ([https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-
Politics-Relig...](https://www.amazon.com/Righteous-Mind-Divided-Politics-
Religion/dp/0307455777)) is a great read that covers the research on the
topic.

~~~
louprado
Yes, I should not have implied otherwise since how one leans is really a
reflection of how one defines their morals, not a deficiency of morals.

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andrewl
This general topic reminds me of Jonathan Haidt's TED talk on the moral
motivations of liberals and conservatives:

[https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind](https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind)

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mbil
A couple years ago there was a quiz going around based on this concept. You
answer 27 non-political questions and the quiz guesses your political leaning.
[http://www.metafilter.com/161320/27-non-political-
questions-...](http://www.metafilter.com/161320/27-non-political-questions-
reveal-your-politics)

~~~
colanderman
More direct link (took me a moment to find it on that page):
[http://chartsme.com/](http://chartsme.com/)

~~~
diyseguy
I just took it. 85% conservative it says. But the fact is I am more like 85%
liberal.

Also, it's a little bit warped because some of the questions would evoke a
different emotion than disgust, but you are required to categorize it as a
disgust level.

~~~
avs733
>I just took it. 85% conservative it says. But the fact is I am more like 85%
liberal.

Not poking at you as a person sincerely.

By whose standard/spectrum? I'm fairly liberal by US standards but fairly
conservative by a lot of others. I have generally found unidimensional
measures of political leanings really unuseful because of their summativeness.

------
emerged
Jordan Peterson describes the archetypal left/right axis as being something
like Nurturing Mother/Fear of The Snake. It certainly makes sense as being a
fundamental axis given that both are beneficial and both are harmful and a
balance has to exist within a population.

~~~
shaki-dora
I think modern times probably need nurturing mothers (and fathers) more than
fear of snakes.

~~~
jklinger410
I think modern times probably need fear of snakes more than nurturing mothers
(or fathers).

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rossdavidh
It is interesting that in nearly all articles on this (by now fairly well
established) correlation, it is phrased as "higher than normal disgust
sensitivity by people with right-of-center beliefs", not "lower than normal
disgust sensitivity by people with left-of-center beliefs". It's like academia
regards right of center political beliefs as a disease that needs curing...

~~~
delecti
You were on track to making an interesting point and then went off course.
It's not unreasonable to conclude that academia has a left-of-center bias, it
is unreasonable to conclude that left-of-center biased academics feel right-
of-center beliefs are something that needs curing.

I expect that you wouldn't be receiving down votes if you had omitted that
last sentence.

~~~
rossdavidh
I expect you are correct in that. I wonder if a similar mechanism inside
academia could be an explanation for the very phenomenon I was wondering
about. Thanks for pointing that out!

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qwerty456127
Both leftists and rightists have their strong shares of adorable and of
disgusting stuff. I'd rather be a republican if not all the religious, nazi
and false-moralist BS they use to promote. I'd rather be a democrat if not all
the extra regulation, taxation, bureaucracy, hypocrisy/hyper-polite-
correctness etc.

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diyseguy
I think there is likely a stronger correlation to wealth rather than politics.
When people have it really good, they get sort of mentally spoiled by getting
everything their way. So, when they encounter something that is not to their
liking, the reaction is stronger because they've been able to successfully
avoid it for longer. The disgusting thing threatens their on-a-higher-level
equilibria and therefore is a stronger threat to them than it would be to a
lower class person who has to encounter it more often. Less well-off people
who have to get their hands dirty more often build up mental callouses to the
grosser aspects of life, like handling compost, cleaning wounds, etc.

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rossdavidh
Reminds one of David Pizarro's TED talk:
[https://www.ted.com/talks/david_pizarro_the_strange_politics...](https://www.ted.com/talks/david_pizarro_the_strange_politics_of_disgust)

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YouAreGreat
> of the 16 Wilson-Patterson items, gay marriage _is the only issue_ that is
> significantly related (p<.05) to electrodermal response

My emphasis. Alternative headline:

"People less likely to stick to an individual party line item when it actually
_affects_ them."

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Glyptodon
Echoes of the Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt.

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cocktailpeanuts
That didn't age well...

Anyone can come up with a correlation report. But if you really want to call
yourself a scientist, you better really be careful about drawing political
conclusions, especially when there's no way to actually "prove" your
conclusion is true, unlike other fields of science where they're more
objectively measure-able.

Here's a much better piece about how disgust sensitivity affects societal
change [https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-
dict...](https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dictatorship-
of-the-small-minority-3f1f83ce4e15)

