Do feelings of disgust have predictive validity about our political attitudes and moral beliefs? A recently published series of studies by psychologists at Cornell University appears to suggest that this is indeed the case. In one study, the researchers administered the Disgust Sensitivity Scale (DSS) and a political ideology scale to a sample of politically-mixed individuals and found a strong correlation between sensitivity to disgust and having a politically conservative outlook. In a second study, participants were asked to respond to the DSS and several questionnaires that assessed their opinions about several relevant moral and political issues. The investigators found a link between disgust and support for gay marriage and abortion such that participants who were found to have a higher susuceptibility to disgust were also less likely to endorse abortion or passing federal legislation to legalize gay marriage. One argument offered by the researchers to account for these findings is that conservatives have argued that disgust is inherently an internal compass for whether a particular issue - aborting an unborn fetus, for example - should be considered morally acceptable or repugnant. In contrast, liberals tend to adopt a more functional perspective and rely predominately on the outcome of a particular issue to determine whether it should be viewed as positive or negative. Regardless, the researchers caution the use of disgust as a ruler for measuring the moral worth of attitudes and beliefs since this faculity is thought to have evolved in order to ward our early ancestors away from disease and contaminants within the environment thereby increasing their likelihood of survival, not as a means to form moral judgments.
