Can a Clean Toilet Seat Help Predict the Next Election?

Note 1

The poor bunny had a terminal infection. My college roommate was too broke to bring it to the vet. So, she asked her boyfriend to help.

“Nay,” said he.

She asked the other roommates.

“Nay,” said they.

I walked in the door home from school into an apparently Victorian English abode and said, “Sure. It’s but a simple wound, good madame.”

Can Our Level of Disgust Predict Our Politics?

One of those roommates had a lifelong aversion towards cucumbers. As a cat would yeet and flee across the room when surprised with a cucumber behind him (they think it’s a snake), my roommate would scraunch in horror at finding a piece of the harmless, tasteless, odorless vegetable at the bottom of a salad.

I know that last fact because of a prank we pulled days after finding out his worst food fear. Boys will be dicks, as they say.

That former roommate has been a life-long staunch conservative of the less extreme Canadian variety.

It All Begins With a Metric

Genetic predisposition towards personality traits is a dangerous topic. We probably have the complete absence of morals in WWII prison medical camps (both German and Japanese) to thank for that.

But here we go anyway.

A man by the name of David Pizarro studies the science of “disgust.” It’s a simple idea with an incredibly rich depth to it. What brought me across his path recently was his TED talk on the idea of associating levels of disgust with who we would vote for.

Sounds like nonsense, right?

Well, nothing a good rabbit hole can’t help figure out.

The Science of Disgust

When Jonathan Haidt, Clark McCauley, and Paul Rozin got together in 1994, they set out to make something a bit funky. They wanted to create a systematic scale to measure the amount of general disgust a person perceives in everyday life.

While a homeless man peeing in your morning brew might be someone’s cup of tea, it’s probably not everyone’s.

A cat’s brown starfish being exposed on a TikTok video is repulsive enough for some videographers to replace it with a floating cartoon butterfly sticker. Or worse.

One person’s pukish cucumber is another person’s repulsive beetroot—AKA the most disgusting thing to ever come out of the ground since Twilight’s character origins.

It was later termed the “Disgust Scale,” fostering further studies into the idea. The scale has since been improved and the recommended version is now creatively called—the “Disgust Scale-Revised”.

Who says scientists aren’t marketing geniuses?

The creation of this scale has since been used in a variety of fascinating studies. One of them, in particular, caught my eye.

Several researchers got together and used fMRI studies to test the idea that rating a person’s level of disgust—after being exposed to certain lovely images—could estimate their political leanings.

They might’ve pursued this as the idea had been floating around for at least a decade, with some studies pointing out the relationship does exist.

Many of these studies and conclusions were heavily attacked for perhaps obvious reasons.

But this team’s findings were different.

The Brain Knows Thyself

Their small study of 83 individuals supported the attacks on the previous work.

“Self-reports about affective images are not predictive of their political views.”

In other words, our internal biases shine through a bit too much when taking self-reported scale tests.

But then there’s the caveat—and she’s a big one.

While you may take a test and unknowingly/knowingly write answers slightly different than what you truly feel, having your brain prodded by magical giant magnets can tell a different story.

And according to these researchers, “fMRI responses to disgusting images accurately predict political orientation.”

Did you catch that?

Being shown specific examples of disgustingness and then having live data on how your brain reacts to those images can reveal which political animal you’re more likely to vote for.

What’s Going On?

The researchers point out a few factors that may be contributing to these results. Namely, that despite the common belief our politics are purely based on logic and rational belief, several studies are beginning to paint a more complex picture.

Essentially, it’s the idea that a typical adult’s political beliefs are probably based on a combination of:

1. Life experiences (ex. receiving government support as a child vs. being driven to a private school while having your boots licked lusciously)

2. Traumatic history (ex. having your mother leave the family at 6 years old to join bohemians after naming you “Tucker” and then getting a new mother that happened to be the extremely wealthy conservative Patricia Swanson of the famous frozen dinner empire)

3. Neurobiological composition (ex. your brain thingy)

And if the fMRI study holds true, then this glaring proposition becomes even more, uhh, glaringer:

“We proposed that conservatives, compared to liberals, have greater negativity bias, which includes both disgusting and threatening conditions in our study.”

Some of the Questions on the Test

The actual test has 27 questions, but here’s a small taste:

1. I might be willing to try eating monkey meat, under some circumstances.

2. It would bother me to be in a science class, and to see a human hand preserved in a jar.

3. I never let any part of my body touch the toilet seat in public restrooms. (and thus the title of this essay)

4. Seeing a cockroach in someone else's house doesn't bother me.

5. It would bother me to see a rat run across my path in a park.

My Take

What an incredibly interesting proposition. The idea that conservatives generally have an inherently greater negativity bias than liberal-minded folks.

I’ve long held the belief that empathy certainly seems to be a clear marker between the two modern political ̶c̶o̶r̶p̶o̶r̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶d̶u̶o̶p̶o̶l̶i̶e̶s̶ parties in the US.

Many of the disagreements I have with my right-leaning friends often revolve around the ideas of earning your keep, less government, and the all-seeing glory of the invisible masturbatory hand of the marketplace.

To me, this displays a lack of caring about their fellow man. That a herd, to them, is not defined by the weakest among them, but by the elongated muskrats at the front.

But maybe I was wrong.

Maybe the truth for our political differences lies far more in our experiences and genetics. Maybe I come from a long line of servants who developed incredibly strange senses of humor to pass the time while cleaning spit off of rich mahogany boots.

Maybe my friends come from past generations of landowners and didn’t have to spend time toiling in the fields and become accustomed to things they now find disgusting.

Or maybe it doesn’t really matter, because the US stands a higher than 0% chance of becoming a 1 party system soon enough.

In that case, let it be known, I LOVE TRUMP’S BOOTS WITH ALL MY TONGUE!

And just in case anyone is curious, this website crafted the creatively titled “Disgust Scale-Revised” into a convenient 3-minute quiz. But remember, it’s far less accurate than getting an fMRI done while viewing the images mentioned. Still, it’s fun. Go give it a try.

As for me, here’s where I scored on the test.

Sorry to disappoint any extremists on either side that may be reading:

Hah! It thinks I have a brain.

That’s a first.

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This message has been brought to you by J.J. Pryor’s “Brain.”

Notes:

1. I thought it might be amusing to include the Ritz Lemon Crackers, a product for sale in my city here in Taiwan. I’m sure some people out there would find it disgusting. There are countless more of these fandangled abominations of western processed food. Should I take pics of them and share them sometime? My current favorite vomit inducer: Chocolate Coke.

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