Monday, September 17, 2007

Liberals and Disgust


globeandmail.com: Social Studies
Liberals and disgust

"Jonathan Haidt, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, does research on morality and emotion. In his early work, he writes on the Edge: The Third Culture website, "I told people short stories in which a person does something disgusting or disrespectful that was perfectly harmless (for example, a family cooks and eats its dog, after the dog was killed by a car). I was trying to pit the emotion of disgust against reasoning about harm and individual rights. I found that disgust won in nearly all groups I studied (in Brazil, India and the United States), except for groups of politically liberal college students, particularly Americans, who overrode their disgust and said that people have a right to do whatever they want, as long as they don't hurt anyone else.""

Sphere: Related Content

0 Comments: