We feel more disgusted by people who don ’t share our political views

By Emily Reynolds Our politics play a significant role in the way we interact with others. We can be dismissive or intolerant of those with different politics to us — and research from 2020 even found that we prefer strangers who share our politics to actual friends who don’t. New research, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, finds that this dislike can go beyond mere intolerance: the team finds that we can even feel physical disgust towards members of political outgroups — with potential repercussions to how we treat our political rivals. The first study took place in 2018, just after midterm elections in the United States. Participants, who all had an affiliation with either the Democratic or Republican party, were presented with six blocks of ten questions. Each block presented 10 male faces with a neutral expression, accompanied by a description of their interests, age, and voting behaviour. Crucially, half of the men were said to have voted for the Democrats and the other the Republicans. For instance, one description read. “Ryan enjoys salads and sci-fi movies. He has 4 siblings and is currently 41 years old. Ryan exclusively voted for Republican Party candidates in the recent midterm election”. Participants responded to questions about each man’s perceived traits: how gross, attractive, healthy, intelligent, moral or trustworthy they judged him to be. Political affiliation had a significant impact on how gross parti...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Emotion Political Source Type: blogs