Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T08:28:41.670Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Slimy worms or sticky kids

How caregiving tasks and gender identity attenuate disgust response

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2020

Aleksander Ksiazkiewicz Open the ORCID record for Aleksander Ksiazkiewicz [Opens in a new window]  and
Amanda Friesen Open the ORCID record for Amanda Friesen [Opens in a new window]
Aleksander Ksiazkiewicz*
Affiliation:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Amanda Friesen
Affiliation:
Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis
*
Correspondence: Aleksander Ksiazkiewicz, Department of Political Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Email: aleksks@illinois.edu
Get access

Abstract

Disgust is derived from evolutionary processes to avoid pathogen contamination. Theories of gender differences in pathogen disgust utilize both evolutionary psychological and sociocultural perspectives. Drawing on research that suggests that masculine and feminine gender identities are somewhat orthogonal, we examine how gender identity intersects with pathogen disgust. In addition, building on evolutionary psychological and sociocultural accounts of how caregiving and parental investment affect pathogen disgust, we present a new measure of caregiving disgust and compare its properties across gender, parental status, and political ideology with those of a conventional pathogen disgust measure. This registered report finds that how masculinity and femininity affect disgust varies by gender, disgust domain, and their intersection; that parental status effects vary by disgust domain but not gender; that reframing disgust in terms of caregiving eliminates the gender gap in disgust; and that the caregiving frame unexpectedly strengthens the relationship between disgust and political ideology.

Keywords

DisgustGenderPolitical ideologyParenthood
Type
Article
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 39 , Special Issue 2: Special Issue: Disgust and Political Attitudes , Fall 2020 , pp. 167 - 186
Copyright
© Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aarøe, L., Petersen, M. B., & Arceneaux, K. (2017). The behavioral immune system shapes political intuitions: Why and how individual differences in disgust sensitivity underlie opposition to immigration. American Political Science Review, 111(2), 277–294.10.1017/S0003055416000770CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Albers, C., & Läkens, D. (2018). When power analyses based on pilot data are biased: Inaccurate effect size estimators and follow-up bias. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 74, 187–195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Balzer, A., & Jacobs, C. M. (2011). Gender and physiological effects in connecting disgust to political preferences. Social Science Quarterly, 92(5), 1297–1313.Google Scholar
Bem, S. (1974). The measurement of psychological androgyny. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 42(2), 155–162.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Berger, U., & Anaki, D. (2014). Demographic influences on disgust: Evidence from a heterogeneous sample. Personality and Individual Differences, 64, 67–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bianchi, S. M., Sayer, L. C., Milkie, M. A., & Robinson, J. P. (2012). Housework: Who did, does or will do it, and how much does it matter? Social Forces, 91(1), 55–63.10.1093/sf/sos120CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bittner, A., & Goodyear-Grant, E. (2017). Sex isn’t gender: Reforming concepts and measurements in the study of public opinion. Political Behavior, 39(4), 1019–1041.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brody, Leslie R. (1997). Gender and emotion: Beyond stereotypes. Journal of Social Issues, 53(2), 369–394.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casey, L. (2016). The Politics of Disgust: Public Opinion Toward LGBTQ People & Policies (Doctoral dissertation).Google Scholar
Curtis, V., Aunger, R., & Rabie, T. (2004). Evidence that disgust evolved to protect from risk of disease. Proceeding of the Royal Society of London B (Suppl.), 271, S 131–133.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Deng, Y., Chang, L., Yang, M., Huo, M., & Zhou, R. 2016. Gender differences in emotional response: Inconsistency between experience and expressivity. PLOS ONE 11(6): e0158666. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0158666CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Donnelly, K., & Twenge, J. M. (2017). Masculine and feminine traits on the Bem Sex-Role Inventory, 1993–2012: A crosstemporal meta-analysis. Sex Roles, 76(9–10), 556–565. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-016-0625-yCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Lang, A. & Buchner, A. (2007). G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods 39, 175–191.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fazekas, Z., & Littvay, L. (2015). The importance of context in the genetic transmission of U.S. party identification. Political Psychology, 36(4), 361–377.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fischer, Agneta H. (1993). Sex differences in emotionality: Fact or stereotype? Feminism and Psychology, 3(3), 303–318.10.1177/0959353593033002CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fleischman, D. S. (2014). Women’s disgust adaptations. In Weekes-Shackelford, V. A. & Shackelford, T.K. (Eds.), Evolutionary perspectives on human sexual psychology and behavior (pp. 277–296). Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gidengil, E., & Stolle, D. (2020). Comparing self-categorisation approaches to measuring gender identity. European Journal of Politics and Gender. https://doi.org/10.1332/251510820X15918093444206Google Scholar
Grossman, M., & Wood, W. (1993). Sex differences in intensity of emotional experience: A social role interpretation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65(5), 1010–1022.10.1037/0022-3514.65.5.1010CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Haidt, J., McCauley, C., & Rozin, P. (1994). Individual differences in sensitivity to disgust: A scale sampling seven domains of disgust elicitors. Personality and Individual Differences, 16(5), 701–713.10.1016/0191-8869(94)90212-7CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hatemi, P. K., Funk, C., Maes, H., Silberg, J., Medland, S., Martin, N., & Eaves, L. (2009). Genetic influences on social attitudes over the life course. Journal of Politics, 71(3), 1141–1156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hatemi, P. K., McDermott, R., Bailey, J. M., & Martin, N. G. (2012). The Different Effects of Gender and Sex on Vote Choice. Political Research Quarterly 65(1): 76–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hook, J. L. (2006). Care in context: Men’s unpaid work in 20 countries, 1965–2003. American Sociological Review, 71(4) , 639 –660.10.1177/000312240607100406CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyde, J. (2005). The gender similarities hypothesis. American Psychologist, 60(6), 581–592.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Inbar, Y., Pizarro, D. A., & Bloom, P. (2009). Conservatives are more easily disgusted than liberals. Cognition and Emotion, 23(4), 714–725.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Inbar, Y., Pizarro, D., Iyer, R., & Haidt, J. (2012). Disgust sensitivity, political conservatism, and voting. Social Psychology and Personality Science, 3(5), 537–544.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Isaksen, L. W. (2002). Toward a sociology of (gendered) disgust: Images of bodily decay and the social organization of care work. Journal of Family Issues, 23(7), 791–811.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kraemer, H. C., Mintz, J., Noda, A., Tinklenberg, J., & Yesavage, J. A. (2006). Caution regarding the use of pilot studies to guide power calculations for study proposals. Archives of General Psychiatry, 63(5), 484–489.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McDermott, M. L. (2016). Masculinity, femininity, and American political behavior. New York: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190462802.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Medland, S., & Hatemi, P. K. (2009). Political science, biometric theory and twin studies: an introduction. Political Analysis, 17(2), 191–214.10.1093/pan/mpn016CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyers-Levy, J., & Loken, B. (2015). Revisiting gender differences: What we know and what lies ahead. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 25(1), 129–149.10.1016/j.jcps.2014.06.003CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, A. L., & Borgida, E. (2016). The separate spheres model of gendered inequality. PLOS ONE, 11(1), e0147315. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0147315Google ScholarPubMed
Mondak, J., & Anderson, M. R. (2004). The knowledge gap: A reexamination of gender-based differences in political knowledge. Journal of Politics, 66(2), 492–512.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Osmundsen, M., Hendry, D., Laustsen, L., Smith, K., & Petersen, M. (2019, June 21). The psychophysiology of political ideology: Replications, reanalysis and recommendations. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/49hfgCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prokop, P., & Fančovičová, J. (2016). Mothers are less disgust sensitive than childless females. Personality and Individual Differences, 96, 65–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quigley, J. F., Sherman, M. F., & Sherman, N. C. (1997). Personality disorder symptoms, gender, and age as predictors of adolescent disgust sensitivity. Personality and Individual Differences, 22(5), 661–667.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohrmann, S., Hopp, H., & Quirin, M. (2008). Gender differences in psychophysiological responses to disgust. Journal of Psychophysiology, 22(2), 65–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rottman, J. (2014). Evolution, development, and the emergence of disgust. Evolutionary Psychology, 12(2), 417–433.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rozin, P. (2008). Hedonic “adaptation”: Specific habituation to disgust/death elicitors as a result of dissecting a cadaver. Judgment and Decision Making, 3(2), 191–194.Google Scholar
Rozin, P., & Haidt, J. (2013). The domains of disgust and their origins: Contrasting biological and cultural evolutionary accounts. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 17(8), 367–368.10.1016/j.tics.2013.06.001CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sherlock, J. M., Zietsch, B. P., Tybur, J. M., & Jern, P. (2016). The quantitative genetics of disgust sensitivity. Emotion, 16(1), 43–51.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shields, S. A. (2002). Speaking from the heart: Gender and the social meaning of emotion. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, K. B., Oxley, D., Hibbing, M. V., Alford, J. R., & Hibbing, J. R. (2011). Disgust sensitivity and the neurophysiology of left-right political orientations. PLOS ONE, 6(10), e25552. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0025552CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sparks, A. M., Fessler, D. M., Chan, K. Q., Ashokkumar, A., & Holbrook, C. (2018). Disgust as a mechanism for decision making under risk: Illuminating sex differences and individual risk-taking correlates of disgust propensity. Emotion, 18(7), 942–958.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stolle, D., and Gidengil, E. 2010. What do women really know? A gendered analysis of varieties of political knowledge. Perspectives on Politics, 8(1), 93–109.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trivers, R. L. (1972). Parental investment and sexual selection. In Campbell, B. (Ed.), Sexual selection and the descent of man, 1871–1971 (pp. 136–179). Aldine.Google Scholar
Tybur, J. M., Inbar, Y., Aarøe, L., Barclay, P., Barlow, F. K., De Barra, M., … & Consedine, N. S. (2016). Parasite stress and pathogen avoidance relate to distinct dimensions of political ideology across 30 nations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(44), 12408–12413.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tybur, J. M., Inbar, Y., Güler, E., & Molho, C. (2015). Is the relationship between pathogen avoidance and ideological conservatism explained by sexual strategies? Evolution and Human Behavior, 36(6), 489–497.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tybur, J. M., Çınar, Ç., Karinen, A. K., & Perone, P. (2018). Why do people vary in disgust? Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 373:20170204.10.1098/rstb.2017.0204CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tybur, J. M., Lieberman, D., & Griskevicius, V. (2009). Microbes, mating, and morality: Individual differences in three functional domains of disgust. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(1), 103–122.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tybur, J. M., Lieberman, D., Kurzban, R., & DiScioli, P. (2013). Disgust: Evolved function and structure. Psychological Review, 120(1), 65–84.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tybur, J. M., Wesseldijk, L., & Jern, P. (2020, April 13). Genetic and environmental influences on disgust proneness, contamination sensitivity, and their covariance. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/qghbcCrossRefGoogle Scholar
van Overveld, M., de Jong, P. J., Peters, M. L., & Schouten, E. (2011). The Disgust Scale-R: A valid and reliable index to investigate separate disgust domains? Personality and Individual Differences, 51(3), 325–330.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wängnerud, L., Solevid, M., & Djerf-Pierre, M. (2019). Moving beyond Categorical Gender in Studies of Risk Aversion and Anxiety. Politics & Gender, 15(4), 826–850.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, G. D., & Patterson, J. R. (1968). A new measure of conservatism. British Journal of Social & Clinical Psychology, 7(4), 264–269.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Zell, E., Krizan, Z., & Teeter, S. (2015). Evaluating gender similarities and differences using metasynthesis. American Psychologist, 70(1), 10–20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Supplementary material: File

Ksiazkiewicz and Friesen supplementary material

Ksiazkiewicz and Friesen supplementary material
Download Ksiazkiewicz and Friesen supplementary material(File)
File 33 KB