Studies: Conservatives easier to disgust

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By Jennifer Harper

Liberals and conservatives are often disgusted with one another. No surprise there.

But conservatives are literally the more easily disgusted of the two when it comes to such squeamish things as maggots, questionable toilet seats and the prospect of eating monkey meat. Such sensitivity, it seems, plays a role in their ideology and moral values.

Two joint studies released Friday from psychologists at Cornell, Harvard and Yale universities determined that conservatives are more fastidious about the creepier, smellier side of life — reflective of a hard-wired instinct for safety and self-preservation.

"It raises questions about the role of disgust — an emotion that likely evolved in humans to keep them safe from potentially hazardous or disease-carrying environments — in contemporary judgments of morality and purity," said study leader David Pizarro, an assistant professor of psychology at Cornell who led the study.

"People have pointed out for a long time that a lot of our moral values seem driven by emotion, and, in particular, disgust appears to be one of those emotions that seems to be recruited for moral judgments."

Freddy Gray, literary editor of American Conservative Magazine, finds the whole idea "extraordinarily funny."

"You can try to read profound things into these findings, but you'd risk being a pseudo-intellectual if you try to ascribe to the notion that conservatives are as uncomfortable about bugs as they are about abortion," Mr. Gray said.

"I don't think these findings about the psychological and squeamish impulses of conservatives should be taken seriously," he said. "Oh, and pardon me, I have to put down the phone because I see a spider crawling nearby. You can quote me on that."

Mr. Gray was having a little fun with the researchers, perhaps — but the team was quite serious.

The researchers surveyed 181 adults from politically mixed "swing states," offering them the "Disgust Sensitivity Scale," a personality ratings system initially developed by behavioral psychologists at the University of Virginia.