1 00:00:06,320 --> 00:00:09,659 Hi, my name is David Pizzaro, I'm a psychologist at Cornell University and I 2 00:00:09,659 --> 00:00:12,900 study emotions, especially emotions and how they influence judgement. 3 00:00:12,900 --> 00:00:15,987 Today I want to talk to you about one of those emotions, the emotion of disgust 4 00:00:15,987 --> 00:00:18,625 and how it might influence your thinking in surprising ways. 5 00:00:18,625 --> 00:00:24,290 For a long time psychologists have pointed to the power of emotions. 6 00:00:24,290 --> 00:00:28,50 In fact emotions are those things that motivate us toward action. 7 00:00:28,50 --> 00:00:31,333 Many times these emotions are things that motivate us toward actions that would 8 00:00:31,333 --> 00:00:34,30 keep us alive. For instance our strongest emotions, 9 00:00:34,30 --> 00:00:38,510 emotions like fear are ones that keep us from getting close to natural predators. 10 00:00:38,510 --> 00:00:43,46 There's a reason why we're afraid naturally of things like lions and snakes 11 00:00:43,46 --> 00:00:45,938 and spiders. But emotions don't only motivate us to 12 00:00:45,938 --> 00:00:48,590 behave in certain ways like avoiding predators. 13 00:00:48,590 --> 00:00:51,520 They also seem to change the way we think about the world. 14 00:00:51,520 --> 00:00:55,18 That is when your'e fearful, not only do you want to run from the lion, but you're 15 00:00:55,18 --> 00:00:57,820 more likely to think that there are lions everywhere. 16 00:00:57,820 --> 00:01:02,480 And this influence on judgement has some interesting effects. 17 00:01:02,480 --> 00:01:06,323 What I want to talk to you about today is the power that the emotion of disgust 18 00:01:06,323 --> 00:01:08,520 might have on the way we make our judgments. 19 00:01:08,520 --> 00:01:12,709 And how a very natural emotion that keeps us away from things that might 20 00:01:12,709 --> 00:01:17,40 contaminate us or give us diseases also changes the way we think about our 21 00:01:17,40 --> 00:01:20,734 social, moral, political, and even our consumer decisions. 22 00:01:20,734 --> 00:01:26,201 Now, the insight that emotions could even be studied systematically probably first 23 00:01:26,201 --> 00:01:30,441 came from Charles Darwin. Who wrote a book in the late 1800s 24 00:01:30,441 --> 00:01:36,800 systematically documenting the universal nature of many human emotions. 25 00:01:36,800 --> 00:01:41,152 Psychologists in the 60s picked up this original project of Darwin's and 26 00:01:41,152 --> 00:01:45,572 documented that across the world there appeared to be a set of universal basic 27 00:01:45,572 --> 00:01:49,856 emotions and these as I said, are the kinds of emotions that were, are around 28 00:01:49,856 --> 00:01:54,280 and universal because they help us adapt to our natural environment. 29 00:01:54,280 --> 00:01:58,450 So for instance, we have fear, surprise, disgust, anger. 30 00:01:58,450 --> 00:02:02,470 All of these are there in the human system, in the human mind, in the human 31 00:02:02,470 --> 00:02:06,150 body because they give us a certain kind of survival advantage. 32 00:02:06,150 --> 00:02:09,90 Disgust is one of these basic universal emotions. 33 00:02:09,90 --> 00:02:12,562 That is no matter where you look, no matter what culture you look to, 34 00:02:12,562 --> 00:02:16,592 somebody, people seem to have this natural adversive response to things that 35 00:02:16,592 --> 00:02:20,24 are gross. Things that might contaminate us or give 36 00:02:20,24 --> 00:02:21,940 us diseases. This is a good emotion. 37 00:02:21,940 --> 00:02:25,408 It keeps our bodies clean, right, disease is something that we've had to deal with 38 00:02:25,408 --> 00:02:29,465 throughout most of human history. So avoiding disease with this natural 39 00:02:29,465 --> 00:02:34,310 program of disease avoidance, that we might call disgust, is a very good thing. 40 00:02:34,310 --> 00:02:36,992 You can see the origins of this even early in infancy. 41 00:02:36,992 --> 00:02:41,642 if you take a bitter liquid or sour liquid and you put it into the mouth of 42 00:02:41,642 --> 00:02:46,592 an infant, a newborn, what you'll see is something very much like the full blown 43 00:02:46,592 --> 00:02:49,300 adult disgust face. They'll wrinkle up their nose. 44 00:02:49,300 --> 00:02:53,980 They'll even protrude their tongue trying to get that thing out of their mouth. 45 00:02:53,980 --> 00:02:57,328 In fact when we make a disgust response, even though we can't see that we're 46 00:02:57,328 --> 00:03:00,784 sticking out our tongue, we're often actually moving our tongue in that same 47 00:03:00,784 --> 00:03:04,373 way. So, one of the things that's very 48 00:03:04,373 --> 00:03:08,326 interesting about disgust and actually one of the reasons I started studying it 49 00:03:08,326 --> 00:03:11,330 was because it's very, very easy to make people disgusted. 50 00:03:11,330 --> 00:03:14,880 Some of the other emotions are hard to influence in the laboratory. 51 00:03:14,880 --> 00:03:17,490 That is we can bring people in the lab and we can try to make them angry. 52 00:03:17,490 --> 00:03:20,520 We can try to make them afraid with various methods. 53 00:03:20,520 --> 00:03:22,250 But disgust we don't have to try very hard. 54 00:03:22,250 --> 00:03:25,378 I'm just going to give you one example of a disgusting image I'll just prepare you 55 00:03:25,378 --> 00:03:27,690 in advance that I'm about to show you something disgusting. 56 00:03:27,690 --> 00:03:32,382 Some of you might actually show that same emotion face that I just showed you where 57 00:03:32,382 --> 00:03:34,100 you wrinkle up your nose. Right. 58 00:03:34,100 --> 00:03:38,195 This is something that we might see in any day in, in, in our lives but it's 59 00:03:38,195 --> 00:03:42,220 something that probably has a profound ability to make you feel disgust. 60 00:03:42,220 --> 00:03:43,820 Some of you might feel it more than others. 61 00:03:43,820 --> 00:03:48,836 And in fact when we look at the sorts of things that make us feel disgusted across 62 00:03:48,836 --> 00:03:53,526 cultures we see a very common pattern. As I said, these are things that tend to 63 00:03:53,526 --> 00:03:56,630 make us sick if we touch them or come into contact with them. 64 00:03:56,630 --> 00:04:01,342 So things like feces, urine, blood, vomit, rotten flesh, pus, all of those 65 00:04:01,342 --> 00:04:06,338 things are universal triggers of disgust. That is to say although we can override 66 00:04:06,338 --> 00:04:09,80 them sometimes. No matter where you look people seem to 67 00:04:09,80 --> 00:04:11,590 respond with the same reaction. And the, it makes sense. 68 00:04:11,590 --> 00:04:14,900 These things are also things that might actually make us sick. 69 00:04:14,900 --> 00:04:18,322 They're signs of disease. Now, when Darwin was investigating the 70 00:04:18,322 --> 00:04:21,980 emotions, he wrote something that I think was very insightful. 71 00:04:21,980 --> 00:04:26,75 he says here in Tierra del Fuego, a native touched with his finger some cold 72 00:04:26,75 --> 00:04:30,317 preserved meat while I was eating and plainly showed disgust at it's softness. 73 00:04:30,317 --> 00:04:34,413 While I felt utter disgust at my food being touched by a a naked savage, though 74 00:04:34,413 --> 00:04:37,734 his hands did not appear dirty. So one of the things that Darwin is 75 00:04:37,734 --> 00:04:41,388 pointing out early on is that the same disgust reaction that he has, he saw in 76 00:04:41,388 --> 00:04:43,886 the savage. This was an early documentation of the 77 00:04:43,886 --> 00:04:47,540 universe, universal nature of disgust but Darwin also points to something 78 00:04:47,540 --> 00:04:51,78 interesting, that is, that we not only feel disgust for things that might 79 00:04:51,78 --> 00:04:54,500 contaminate us by putting it in our, putting it in our mouth, or maybe by 80 00:04:54,500 --> 00:04:58,96 touching it, but we also feel disgust very easily at people, other people, 81 00:04:58,96 --> 00:05:02,174 people that might be foreign from us. And he also points to the fact that 82 00:05:02,174 --> 00:05:06,481 disgust, one of the real important features of disgust Is that it works 83 00:05:06,481 --> 00:05:10,430 through contagion. To give you an example, if you stand next 84 00:05:10,430 --> 00:05:14,790 to a lion I might be afraid of the lion but I'm not now afraid of you. 85 00:05:14,790 --> 00:05:18,581 Disgust doesn't work that way. If you touch something disgusting, now 86 00:05:18,581 --> 00:05:23,18 that thing has the property of disgust. That is, through this association with 87 00:05:23,18 --> 00:05:26,740 the bad thing. That has now been contaminated and I 88 00:05:26,740 --> 00:05:29,922 don't want to touch it. And if you think about it, this is a very 89 00:05:29,922 --> 00:05:32,140 good thing if what we're trying to avoid is disease. 90 00:05:32,140 --> 00:05:36,236 So before we had an explicit theory of how germs spread and cause disease, the 91 00:05:36,236 --> 00:05:38,624 emotion of disgust was tracking contagion. 92 00:05:38,624 --> 00:05:43,540 The power of contagion is at work a lot in, in the emotion of disgust. 93 00:05:43,540 --> 00:05:47,730 Especially as we navigate our daily social moral political lives. 94 00:05:47,730 --> 00:05:50,410 but also when we make our consumer decisions. 95 00:05:50,410 --> 00:05:51,890 Let me give you an example from one study. 96 00:05:51,890 --> 00:05:57,116 researchers gave individuals a mug and asked them, how much do you think this 97 00:05:57,116 --> 00:05:59,460 mug is worth? This was compared to a group who were 98 00:05:59,460 --> 00:06:01,930 just asked, how much do you think this mug is worth. 99 00:06:01,930 --> 00:06:05,806 but we're not given the mug, and it turns out in general people think that their 100 00:06:05,806 --> 00:06:09,641 own, their own things are worth more. So if you say how much would you sell 101 00:06:09,641 --> 00:06:12,908 this mug for, how much is worth? If I've just given it to you, you'd 102 00:06:12,908 --> 00:06:16,562 actually think that it's worth more. But if I showed you disgusting images 103 00:06:16,562 --> 00:06:19,230 like the one I just showed you before, that effect goes away. 104 00:06:19,230 --> 00:06:23,390 One of the most robust effects, that we like things and we value things that are 105 00:06:23,390 --> 00:06:27,486 our own more than those things that belong to others, can be completely wiped 106 00:06:27,486 --> 00:06:31,770 out if we are now feeling disgust when evaluating the value of our own product. 107 00:06:31,770 --> 00:06:36,661 In another set of studies If products that are disgusting touched products that 108 00:06:36,661 --> 00:06:40,968 were not disgusting so in this case a product that has to come into close 109 00:06:40,968 --> 00:06:43,320 contact with the body. They used tampons. 110 00:06:43,320 --> 00:06:47,992 If tampons touched a bag of cookies, mind you both of them were closed and they 111 00:06:47,992 --> 00:06:51,870 were clean tampons. There was no chance of any contamination 112 00:06:51,870 --> 00:06:55,350 going on. Just the fact that people were disgusted 113 00:06:55,350 --> 00:06:58,762 slightly by the tampons made them value the cookies less. 114 00:06:58,762 --> 00:07:03,778 Now this property of contagion that we can see in consumer decisions extends to 115 00:07:03,778 --> 00:07:07,720 what might be considered a very a much more important domain. 116 00:07:07,720 --> 00:07:11,812 That is we can make you feel disgusted not at cookies or a mug, we can make you 117 00:07:11,812 --> 00:07:15,370 feel disgusted about a person or an entire social group. 118 00:07:15,370 --> 00:07:18,760 This has been used quite effectively and quite tragically in many cases. 119 00:07:18,760 --> 00:07:23,115 One of the best cases comes from World War 2 propaganda, where the Germans were 120 00:07:23,115 --> 00:07:27,269 trying to convince people that the, that the Jews were filthy, disgusting 121 00:07:27,269 --> 00:07:30,370 individuals in, in part to make it easier to kill them. 122 00:07:30,370 --> 00:07:34,700 So, this comes, this quote comes from a Nazi children's book published in 1938. 123 00:07:34,700 --> 00:07:38,858 Trying to point the children to the disgusting, the disgusting features of 124 00:07:38,858 --> 00:07:41,460 Jewish people. It says just look at these guys! 125 00:07:41,460 --> 00:07:44,600 The louse-infested beards! The filthy, protruding ears, those 126 00:07:44,600 --> 00:07:47,655 stained fatty clothes. Jews often have an unpleasant sweetish 127 00:07:47,655 --> 00:07:50,638 odor. If you have a good nose you can smell the 128 00:07:50,638 --> 00:07:53,387 Jews. More recently this very same tactic has 129 00:07:53,387 --> 00:07:58,430 been used by people who want to convince us that homosexuality is bad or immoral. 130 00:07:58,430 --> 00:08:02,639 So this is taken from an anti-gay website, gays are worthy of death for 131 00:08:02,639 --> 00:08:06,986 their vile sex practices, they're like dogs eating their own vomit and sows 132 00:08:06,986 --> 00:08:10,946 wallowing in their own feces. Again, these very low level discussed 133 00:08:10,946 --> 00:08:15,502 properties, pointing to human bodily products for instance or, or specific 134 00:08:15,502 --> 00:08:19,854 descriptions of sexual acts get the disgust reaction going, and through the 135 00:08:19,854 --> 00:08:24,2 process of contagion, we tag an individual or an entire social group, and 136 00:08:24,2 --> 00:08:28,516 it gives us a very, very strong avoidance and negative response to that group. 137 00:08:28,516 --> 00:08:33,274 Now, one of the questions that my colleagues and I wanted to answer was are 138 00:08:33,274 --> 00:08:38,110 some people just more prone, more susceptible, to being convinced by this 139 00:08:38,110 --> 00:08:42,72 process of contagion. And so, one of the things that we wanted 140 00:08:42,72 --> 00:08:45,712 to look at was, well, maybe some people who are more easy to disgust than others 141 00:08:45,712 --> 00:08:49,576 would be more likely to have some kind of negative attitudes toward certain social 142 00:08:49,576 --> 00:08:52,242 groups. And we were able to do that by looking 143 00:08:52,242 --> 00:08:57,354 across the population at, simply put, the levels of squeamishness that individuals 144 00:08:57,354 --> 00:08:59,956 have. Just as with many other basic universal 145 00:08:59,956 --> 00:09:03,560 notions, while we all have them, some of them have them much stronger than others. 146 00:09:03,560 --> 00:09:07,340 So in this class, there are many of you who when I showed that image had a very, 147 00:09:07,340 --> 00:09:11,360 very strong response, some of you weren't even bothered at all and wondered why I 148 00:09:11,360 --> 00:09:14,748 bothered to put the picture up. We can actually measure this level of 149 00:09:14,748 --> 00:09:18,750 squeamishness using a scale called the disgust sensitivity scale and plot people 150 00:09:18,750 --> 00:09:22,520 along the line of how easily disgusted they are in everyday life and how hard to 151 00:09:22,520 --> 00:09:25,636 disgust they are. we do this by asking a series of 152 00:09:25,636 --> 00:09:28,840 questions. Let me give you a couple of examples. 153 00:09:28,840 --> 00:09:32,366 Imagine that you were asked this. Even if I were hungry I would not drink a 154 00:09:32,366 --> 00:09:36,718 bowl of my favorite soup if it had been stirred by a used but thoroughly washed 155 00:09:36,718 --> 00:09:39,153 fly swatter. How much do you agree or disagree with 156 00:09:39,153 --> 00:09:41,770 that statement? Or, while you're walking through a tunnel 157 00:09:41,770 --> 00:09:45,693 under a railroad track, you smell urine. Would you be very disgusted or not at all 158 00:09:45,693 --> 00:09:48,289 disgusted at? It turns out that I'm actually very very 159 00:09:48,289 --> 00:09:50,960 disgusted so it's hard for me to do this research. 160 00:09:50,960 --> 00:09:55,184 But we can plot a score given enough of these questions that gives you an overall 161 00:09:55,184 --> 00:09:58,663 score on how discussed sensitive you are, how squeamish you are. 162 00:09:59,790 --> 00:10:02,810 One of the things that this can do is predict your actual behavior. 163 00:10:02,810 --> 00:10:05,870 So the researchers that came up with the scale brought people into the laboratory 164 00:10:05,870 --> 00:10:08,120 and asked them to do a variety of tasks that were disgusting. 165 00:10:08,120 --> 00:10:12,191 For instance, eat perfectly healthy, in fact very nutritious, meal worms but that 166 00:10:12,191 --> 00:10:16,400 nobody eats worms really in the United States so they were very disgusting. 167 00:10:16,400 --> 00:10:21,230 or something milder like eat a piece of chocolate that's been baked to look like 168 00:10:21,230 --> 00:10:24,870 a, to look like dog poop. it turns out people find, people who are 169 00:10:24,870 --> 00:10:28,650 very easily disgusted are much less likely to do that than people who are not 170 00:10:28,650 --> 00:10:31,590 easily disgusted. So your score on this scale actually 171 00:10:31,590 --> 00:10:34,790 predicts your actual disgust response and your behavior. 172 00:10:34,790 --> 00:10:38,885 One of the first things we found was that disgust sensitivity, that is level of 173 00:10:38,885 --> 00:10:42,760 squeamishness, seems to predict of all things, political orientation. 174 00:10:42,760 --> 00:10:46,288 As people who are more likely to be politically conservative were also more 175 00:10:46,288 --> 00:10:49,892 likely to say they were easily disgusted. Another way of saying this though, is 176 00:10:49,892 --> 00:10:52,918 that people who report being more liberal are less easy to disgust. 177 00:10:52,918 --> 00:10:55,800 You might imagine why one way or the other might make more sense. 178 00:10:55,800 --> 00:10:59,944 But this is the general relationship. And we found this over three, four, five 179 00:10:59,944 --> 00:11:03,560 different data collections looking at different populations. 180 00:11:03,560 --> 00:11:07,912 Until we finally came to a very very big data set at least when speaking about 181 00:11:07,912 --> 00:11:11,944 psychology, we were able to look at nearly 30,000 respondents in the United 182 00:11:11,944 --> 00:11:15,912 States, what you see on this graph is that people who are very conservative 183 00:11:15,912 --> 00:11:20,300 there on the right, are much more likely to report that they are easily disgusted. 184 00:11:20,300 --> 00:11:23,870 That's higher numbers there indicate their more squeamish. 185 00:11:23,870 --> 00:11:27,83 And on the other hand, people were very liberal or actually less likely to be 186 00:11:27,83 --> 00:11:30,610 easily disgusted.. We found this even though we were able to 187 00:11:30,610 --> 00:11:34,390 statically control for a variety of factors that we know are related both to 188 00:11:34,390 --> 00:11:38,410 disgust sensitivity and to political orientation like socioeconomic status, 189 00:11:38,410 --> 00:11:42,310 income, education levels, religiosity even some of the biggest personality 190 00:11:42,310 --> 00:11:44,600 traits that we know are associated with both. 191 00:11:44,600 --> 00:11:48,119 No matter what we still found a general relationship between disgust sensitivity 192 00:11:48,119 --> 00:11:50,660 how easily disgusted you are and your political beliefs. 193 00:11:50,660 --> 00:11:54,884 And this actually predicted not just how you respond on a one to seven scale of 194 00:11:54,884 --> 00:11:59,240 how politically conservative you are or liberal, but it also seemed to predict 195 00:11:59,240 --> 00:12:02,810 actually voting behavior. That is when we look at state by state 196 00:12:02,810 --> 00:12:06,586 voting results in the 2008 US presidential election, what we found was 197 00:12:06,586 --> 00:12:10,874 that levels of disgust sensitivity in a state predicted the margin of victory of 198 00:12:10,874 --> 00:12:14,83 Obama over McCain. That is, states that had, in general, 199 00:12:14,83 --> 00:12:18,806 higher levels of discussed sensitivity. Where, states where McCain actually got 200 00:12:18,806 --> 00:12:23,805 more votes compared to Obama. Now, we were wondering whether this was 201 00:12:23,805 --> 00:12:27,140 maybe just a feature of American politics. 202 00:12:27,140 --> 00:12:30,990 So, we looked across the world. Across 121 different countries. 203 00:12:30,990 --> 00:12:34,140 Here, you see collapsed into a number of geographical regions. 204 00:12:34,140 --> 00:12:37,562 We ask the same kinds of political questions and discuss sensitivity 205 00:12:37,562 --> 00:12:40,64 questions. And what we were able to see was these 206 00:12:40,64 --> 00:12:43,712 numbers indicate the strength of the relationship the correlation between 207 00:12:43,712 --> 00:12:46,180 discuss sensitivity and political orientation. 208 00:12:46,180 --> 00:12:49,540 What you see is no matter where you look across the world the samae result 209 00:12:49,540 --> 00:12:52,430 emerges. That is by enlarged the more likely you 210 00:12:52,430 --> 00:12:55,790 are to be easily disgusted the more likely you are to be politically 211 00:12:55,790 --> 00:12:58,469 conservative. Or again you are liberal if you are not 212 00:12:58,469 --> 00:13:02,94 usually discussed it. Now this is a fairly small effect this 213 00:13:02,94 --> 00:13:06,460 accounts for a small part of why we might have political beliefs. 214 00:13:06,460 --> 00:13:10,486 But nonetheless it's interesting because most people might not think that how 215 00:13:10,486 --> 00:13:14,512 easily disgusted they are by things like on flush toilets or speak to strangers 216 00:13:14,512 --> 00:13:17,256 soda. Might actually predict who they vote for 217 00:13:17,256 --> 00:13:20,487 in a presidential election. One of the questions that we had was 218 00:13:20,487 --> 00:13:24,605 whether we could actually shift people's attitudes towards social groups and moral 219 00:13:24,605 --> 00:13:27,890 and political attitudes in particular by making them disgusted. 220 00:13:27,890 --> 00:13:31,720 So what we did at Cornell in our lab was bring participants into the lab. 221 00:13:31,720 --> 00:13:33,790 And asked them to fill out a series of questionnaires. 222 00:13:33,790 --> 00:13:37,430 In this particular study we asked them to evaluate certain social groups. 223 00:13:37,430 --> 00:13:42,520 We knew that there was a strong link between homosexuality and disgust. 224 00:13:42,520 --> 00:13:46,680 Because of the way that many people who are anti homosexual talk about the sex 225 00:13:46,680 --> 00:13:49,350 act and use disgust in order to convince people. 226 00:13:49,350 --> 00:13:54,190 So we wanted to see if if making people disgusted in a completely unrelated way. 227 00:13:54,190 --> 00:13:56,965 That is we weren't making them disgusted about sex or anything like that. 228 00:13:56,965 --> 00:13:59,900 We were making them disgusted with a fould odor. 229 00:13:59,900 --> 00:14:03,255 Essentially we sprayed with a really nasty odor on every other day, and we 230 00:14:03,255 --> 00:14:06,665 brought participants into the lab, and asked them what they thought about 231 00:14:06,665 --> 00:14:10,192 certain social groups. African-Americans, the elderly, 232 00:14:10,192 --> 00:14:15,336 immigrants, gay men, and lesbian women. And what we found was, that the foul odor 233 00:14:15,336 --> 00:14:20,16 had a particularly strong effect In fact, the only effect we found, was that it 234 00:14:20,16 --> 00:14:22,930 made people negatively evaluate gay men more. 235 00:14:22,930 --> 00:14:27,146 So that is, on the days when people had to evaluate gay men, where there was a 236 00:14:27,146 --> 00:14:31,158 foul smell in the room, they were more likely to find, to report greater 237 00:14:31,158 --> 00:14:34,576 negative attitudes. Here, this is plotting on a feeling 238 00:14:34,576 --> 00:14:37,813 thermometer. That is, from zero to 100, how warmly, or 239 00:14:37,813 --> 00:14:43,700 coldly, do you feel toward gay men. Other labs have also looked at these 240 00:14:43,700 --> 00:14:48,670 differences using physiological measures, you might wonder self report, that is if 241 00:14:48,670 --> 00:14:52,660 you ask, if I ask you how easily disgusted you are, maybe you're not so 242 00:14:52,660 --> 00:14:55,310 accurate. But if I hook you up to physiological 243 00:14:55,310 --> 00:14:59,275 measures, measures of heart beat, and skin conductance that we know are rough 244 00:14:59,275 --> 00:15:02,813 measures of arrousal, and show you disgusting images We find the same 245 00:15:02,813 --> 00:15:05,322 general effect. People who report being greater 246 00:15:05,322 --> 00:15:08,738 conservatives, more likely to be politically conservative, are more 247 00:15:08,738 --> 00:15:11,950 physiologically aroused when presented with disgusting images. 248 00:15:11,950 --> 00:15:16,539 Liberals are less physically aroused. In particular, attitudes towards 249 00:15:16,539 --> 00:15:22,209 homosexuality and abortion were the ones that predicted more, most, whether or not 250 00:15:22,209 --> 00:15:27,474 people would be aroused by disgusting images that had nothing to do with those 251 00:15:27,474 --> 00:15:31,336 issues such as dog feces. Well, there's another way to kick in this 252 00:15:31,336 --> 00:15:34,510 feeling that there might be contamination in the environment. 253 00:15:34,510 --> 00:15:38,536 So discussed is a particularly powerful way to do this, but discussed again, is 254 00:15:38,536 --> 00:15:41,40 in the service of keeping us from getting sick. 255 00:15:41,40 --> 00:15:44,442 You can show similar effects by just reminding people that there is disease 256 00:15:44,442 --> 00:15:47,792 prevelant in the environment. And a number of researchers have used 257 00:15:47,792 --> 00:15:52,136 this disease avoidance As a manipulation. We thought, well, perhaps just reminding 258 00:15:52,136 --> 00:15:56,96 people that there's contamination in the environment might get them to change 259 00:15:56,96 --> 00:16:00,169 their political and moral attitudes. So, we conducted a study where all we did 260 00:16:00,169 --> 00:16:04,327 was remind people that the swine flu was, was prevalent in Cornell and that they 261 00:16:04,327 --> 00:16:07,878 should sanitize their hands. In one case we explicitly told them that 262 00:16:07,878 --> 00:16:11,30 they should sanitize their hands. And asked them a number of, of questions 263 00:16:11,30 --> 00:16:13,410 about their moral beliefs and their political beliefs. 264 00:16:13,410 --> 00:16:17,370 In another case we actually just asked them to fill out a questionnaire, either 265 00:16:17,370 --> 00:16:21,444 next to a hand sanitizing station or not. And what we found is, was that a simple 266 00:16:21,444 --> 00:16:25,540 reminder to wash your hands actually had a pretty strong effect on your moral 267 00:16:25,540 --> 00:16:29,605 beliefs. In this case beliefs about sexually weird 268 00:16:29,605 --> 00:16:32,900 but harmless practices. Let me give you an example. 269 00:16:32,900 --> 00:16:38,594 so we asked people, imagine that Joe is house sitting for his grandmother and Joe 270 00:16:38,594 --> 00:16:43,378 invites his girlfriend over and they have sex on his grandmother's bed. 271 00:16:43,378 --> 00:16:47,470 Now, if I'd just reminded you that you should wash your hands because of the 272 00:16:47,470 --> 00:16:51,628 swine flu, you're more likely to find that to be morally wrong that if I had to 273 00:16:51,628 --> 00:16:53,790 be. When we asked people to report their 274 00:16:53,790 --> 00:16:58,78 political orientation in their same set of studies we also found general effect 275 00:16:58,78 --> 00:17:01,662 that simply reminding people to wash their hands had a change in how 276 00:17:01,662 --> 00:17:05,336 conservative there reported being politically conservative. 277 00:17:05,336 --> 00:17:09,496 So a simple reminder of of disgust or of contamination can change our consumer 278 00:17:09,496 --> 00:17:12,665 decisions. It can change our political decisions, it 279 00:17:12,665 --> 00:17:15,910 can change our moral decisions. This is a case in which disgust is not 280 00:17:15,910 --> 00:17:19,528 simply preventing us from eating things that might make us sick but it's having a 281 00:17:19,528 --> 00:17:22,900 fairly profound influence on our social, political, moral judgements. 282 00:17:22,900 --> 00:17:26,438 The question that I want to leave you with is now that we know this, we can 283 00:17:26,438 --> 00:17:30,281 finally get to the point where we can ask when should emotions influence our 284 00:17:30,281 --> 00:17:33,424 thinking? Science isn't particularly well-suited to 285 00:17:33,424 --> 00:17:36,723 answer this question. All we can do is point out how emotions 286 00:17:36,723 --> 00:17:39,31 work. How emotions can influence the way we 287 00:17:39,31 --> 00:17:43,215 make decisions and judgements. But we have to now ask the additional 288 00:17:43,215 --> 00:17:48,240 question, now that we know that, should disgust shape the way, for instance, you 289 00:17:48,240 --> 00:17:51,644 will. Who you vote for in the political, in the 290 00:17:51,644 --> 00:17:56,64 political elections, what you vote for about gay rights, or what you buy at the 291 00:17:56,64 --> 00:18:03,293 grocery store. Thank you very much.