Authoritarianism has resurfaced as a research topic in political psychology, as it appears relevant to explain current political trends. Authoritarian attitudes have been consistently linked to feelings of disgust, an emotion that is thought to have evolved to protect the organism from contamination. We hypothesized that body odour disgust sensitivity (BODS) might be associated with authoritarianism, as chemo-signalling is a primitive system for regulating interpersonal contact and disease avoidance, which are key features also in authoritarianism. We used well-validated scales for measuring BODS, authoritarianism and related constructs. Across two studies, we found that BODS is positively related to authoritarianism. In a third study, we showed a positive association between BODS scores and support for Donald Trump, who, at the time of data collection, was a presidential candidate with an agenda described as resonating with authoritarian attitudes. Authoritarianism fully explained the positive association between BODS and support for Donald Trump. Our findings highlight body odour disgust as a new and promising domain in political psychology research. Authoritarianism and BODS might be part of the same disease avoidance framework, and our results contribute to the growing evidence that contemporary social attitudes might be rooted in basic sensory functions.
Sunday, March 4th, 2018
Body odour disgust sensitivity predicts authoritarian attitudes
Author: Marco Tullio Liuzza, Torun Lindholm, Caitlin B. Hawley, Marie Gustafsson Sendén, Ingrid Ekström, Mats J. Olsson, Jonas K. Olofsson
Source: Royal Society Open Science
Publication Date: 28 February 2018.DOI: 10.1098/rsos.171091
Link: Body odour disgust sensitivity predicts authoritarian attitudes
Source: Royal Society Open Science
Publication Date: 28 February 2018.DOI: 10.1098/rsos.171091
Link: Body odour disgust sensitivity predicts authoritarian attitudes
Stephan: In the 8 Laws of Change there is a chapter on the psychophysiology of politics, because I think it plays a much bigger role in influencing voter activity than is acknowledged, although this is changing as this paper illustrates.
One of the areas I covered in the chapter was research revealing a linkage of bad odors and conservative authoritarian attitudes.
What matters in science is replication, and here is the latest on the odor linkage confirming the hypothesis. It so newly published in the peer-reviewed science literature that no one has yet done a popular presentation. But I think the abstract is clear enough, demanding no particular technical knowledge. Here it is.
Click through for the full paper.