Policing the Perimeter: Disgust and Purity in Democratic Debate

We seek to explicate the precise role that one specific emotion, disgust, plays in generating political acrimony. We do so by identifying the link between the different dimensions along which moral judgments are made by those espousing different political ideologies and the different emotions which undergird these evaluations. These assessments reliably track along liberal and conservative dimensions, are linked to the way in which values associated with purity and sanctity elicit greater degrees of disgust among conservatives. . Here we review a growing literature showing how disgust affects the psychology of politics through its influence on the cognitive and emotional processes which govern judgments of morality, as well as its direct impact on specific policy preferences. We then apply these findings to the nature and tenor of political discourse, and suggest some of the ways that disgust might affect the character and function of democratic debate and tolerance. Finally, we discuss what these findings might mean for public policy.