I'm signed up for a daily trivia email and I thought today's was interesting and fun. There is a study linking how easily a person is to disgust with how liberal or conservative they are. The politics of being grossed out
There is also a quiz you can take that will rate how liberal or conservative you are based on how easy to disgust you are. According to how easy I am to disgust, I am 67% liberal and 33% conservative.
Ok who actually answers that they'd rather eat a piece of paper than a piece of fruit? How is that a question?
Just add some glue and it tastes delicious. If you're feeling fancy, add some glitter too. It goes great with a box of crayons or some chalk.
The relationship between disgust and moral views is actually pretty interesting. People with stronger disgust responses are more likely to be prejudiced against other races and to experience moral disgust. The former's not so great, but the latter seems pretty cool and I think can explain why liberals who sometimes have decent views (e.g. historically being the more progressive ones on race issues) also seem to lack the intuition that just sort of screams out at you that clearly ridiculous things (transgenderism, polyamory etc.) are in fact ridiculous.
Here's more on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disgust#Morality
Edit: Apparently I'm 56% conservative and 44% liberal. Uh-oh.
Eh, this seems like junk science, on a par with Myers-Briggs or astrology.
Many of these relate either to etiquette or to health (not drinking spoiled milk eg). To some extent etiquette maps on to upbringing and socio-economic class - although not always, and this is confounded by culture, and by the fact that many in lower classes cling to etiquette for social mobility while many in the upper classes scorn etiquette to demonstrate their high status.
People who recoil in horror at "misgendering," as if they've been punched in the stomach, seem to have a pretty low trigger for 'disgust' to me.
I agree that this seems like pretty bad science. I wouldn't eat monkey meat because I'm a vegetarian. It has nothing to do with disgust. I'm pretty sure that vegetarians and vegans are mostly Democrats.
Eh, this seems like junk science, on a par with Myers-Briggs or astrology.
More precisely, junk science on exactly the same level as old-school OK Cupid quizzes.
Which were all such trash, with results that never made a ton of sense, but... srsly how were those alws so much fun? 😂😂😂 And it invariably turned out that all your friends did the same quiz, too, so, somebody's marketing idea was working baha.
(Or maybe it totally wasn't working, given that my friends and I were still way, way, WAY underage when we took most of those quizzes hahah)
Those OKC quizzes were life and always accurate!!!
There seem to be a lot of assumptions in the quiz about people feeling disgusted by dead bodies (animal and human) and by human bodily secretions and fluids like mucus and vomit. Also, not all urine smells the same.
The quiz made me wonder about the sex of those who came up with the questions, the cultural milieu they grew up in, and their life experience. I wondered who in their household and background does/did the laundry, cooking, cleaning, diaper changing and other childcare, elder care, hands-on care of the sick, pet care and animal tending; who they rely on for medical care; and who in their families/community/religion takes care of the dying and dead.
There seem to be a lot of assumptions in the quiz about people feeling disgusted by dead bodies (animal and human)
This struck me too. Seeing a disembodied hand in a jar might be upsetting not in an "ew, gross" sense (disgust) but rather concern with the treatment of human remains.
Also, if you become a parent or become a carer and get used to all the smells and bodily fluids, do you become more liberal in your politics?
You're probably right about the junk science. I would say though that a lot of TRAs are a lot more conservative than they pretend to be.😂
Their views on gender are out of the 11th century, certainly.
I knew the Normans were to blame for this.
So I got 42/58 republican/democrat, respectively.
I’m really curious at to the metric here. Are liberals supposed to be dirty birdies with no disgust?
And I wouldn’t want to touch the poor dead cat, not because I’m disgusted, but because it’s just sad and horrible. Poor kitty. I also don’t want to eat monkey meat because they’re primates, it feels wrong to me. It’s not because the meat is “weird”. And, the cockroach is extreme disgust while the rat isn’t, because for me, insects are way grosser than furry creatures. The fake eyeball? That’s cool! But the accident with intestines is horrific. This one boils down to suffering, not disgust. I’m horrified by suffering but as long as fake eyeball guy wasn’t in pain I wouldn’t mind.
There’s just a lot of nuance it can’t capture here.
I’m disgusted just reading those options. Anything involving a dead cat is distressing and makes me want revenge on whoever is responsible.
I got the exact same score! Agree with you on the oddness of the questions - I would feel sadness or fear at quite a few of those, but not any disgust.
As an aside - what’s wrong with eating an apple with a knife and fork??
Ikr? I’d just think that was funny.
I got the same as you, OP!
I live in NYC, I worked with animals, not too much disgusts me.
No surprise there for me - it says my brain is a "Republican" (slightly over 50%), although I've never voted for a Republican for state or national office and don't see that changing anytime soon. I definitely have a lower disgust threshold than other people I know, though. I'm not one who can remain unbothered by feces on the sidewalk or subways reeking of urine and I think that clean, safe cities are important (for women, children, and the elderly in particular). Many of my friends think that is a conservative viewpoint.
It's interesting that it says "your brain is..." but it's been asking you about your gut feelings the whole time. So in a case like yours, it's apparent that your brain is a Democrat (or Independent, or however you have been consciously voting) even if your gut sensibilities lean Republican. So maybe the test should be cross-referenced (I don't know if that's the right word) with a quiz about if you make decisions more with rationality or with gut feeling. In your case, sounds like you are brain-all-the-way, rather than feelings. Just my thoughts.
Another sign that this is a buzzfeed sort of thing ... kind of fun but without real meaning. Most people have different visceral and cerebral reactions, and the fact that the survey writers can't/won't distinguish is problematic, as the kids say.
mahah I got 4% conservative.
Injuries and death are... things that happen?
And oh my word, like fully 2/3 of that quiz was just an endless succession of impossibly lightweight non-examples (especially the 999 different takes on "You totally almost ate/drank this thing, but you smelled it just in time not to!" Guuuuurl can you at least tell me it touched my tongue, so I can stop this streak of 16,383 "No Disgust"s in a row? 👩🏻🦱
(Also, there was a question about... a dog-turd-shaped chocolate bar....? I was admittedly speed-reading, but I genuinely thought that question said it was just a chocolate bar.
Did it actually say chocolate covered dog turd?
If so, I need a retake mahah)
The real issue for me here is that this quizzo didn't contain the small handful of items I DO find disgusting (or just reflexively emetic, even without any emotional disgust reaction—i figure that projectile vomiting should probably count as "registering disgust".)
Nor, most likely, would any other quiz—because they're all things that most people experience as somewhere between inoffensive and genuinely pleasurable.
The smell of marijuana, for instance, literally disgusts and aggravates me all the way to the threshold of actual violent rage (i have absolutely no idea why).
If i'm in a car sitting anywhere but the driver's seat and somebody lights up a joint, I WILL smash out the nearest window if my exactly one "polite request plus even more eerily polite warning" is ignored.
The two foods that are insta-emetics for me are ice cream and butter. (Butter is especially bad because of its unique and horrid way of painting the entire inside space of yr mouth with a film of grease... which makes me KEEP throwing up pretty much continuously until enough liquid stomach-acid artillery has been launched to finally strip at all clean (replacing it with.... um, well, that fresh throw-up taste ofc. Which is still, uh, 'less than great' but does not even begin to approach the abject horrors of buttermouth.)
The smell of marijuana, for instance, literally disgusts and aggravates me all the way to the threshold of actual violent rage (i have absolutely no idea why).
xD Honestly I'm right there with you, although not to that level of rage. Rage is reserved for chewing sounds, snoring, etc. But it's a strong second.
If pot had to be legalized, why couldn't we have engineered a scentless strain by now. That's all I'm asking for.
Conservative (65%) Liberal (35%)
I guess being a vegetarian with OCD makes me a conservative now. I don't think this is legit.