BioOne.org will be down briefly for maintenance on 17 December 2024 between 18:00-22:00 Pacific Time US. We apologize for any inconvenience.
How to translate text using browser tools
26 April 2023 Disgust sensitivity and support for immigration across five nations
Scott Clifford, Cengiz Erisen, Dane Wendell, Francisco Cantú
Author Affiliations +
Abstract

Immigration has become a focal debate in politics across the world. Recent research suggests that anti-immigration attitudes may have deep psychological roots in implicit disease avoidance motivations. A key implication of this theory is that individual differences in disease avoidance should be related to opposition to immigration across a wide variety of cultural and political contexts. However, existing evidence on the topic has come almost entirely from the United States and Canada. In this article, we test the disease avoidance hypothesis using nationally representative samples from Norway, Sweden, Turkey, and Mexico, as well as two diverse samples from the United States. We find consistent and robust evidence that disgust sensitivity is associated with anti-immigration attitudes and that the relationship is similar in magnitude to education. Overall, our findings support the disease avoidance hypothesis and provide new insights into the nature of anti-immigration attitudes.

Scott Clifford, Cengiz Erisen, Dane Wendell, and Francisco Cantú "Disgust sensitivity and support for immigration across five nations," Politics and the Life Sciences 42(1), 65-80, (26 April 2023). https://doi.org/10.1017/pls.2022.6
Published: 26 April 2023
JOURNAL ARTICLE
16 PAGES

This article is only available to subscribers.
It is not available for individual sale.
+ SAVE TO MY LIBRARY

KEYWORDS
behavioral immune system
disgust
disgust sensitivity
immigration
RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS
Get copyright permission
Back to Top