Domain specificity of disgust on political ideology in Australia

Disgust can influence the way we make judgments about political issues. Most research has measured a general perspective of disgust, rather than examining its domain specificity. The aim of this study was to undertake a domain specific investigation of this relationship. This was done by analysing changes to specific socio-political views that occurred as a result of experimental manipulation of the three disgust factors; core, contamination and animal-reminder. Participants were 136 male (n = 26) and female (n = 109) University of Tasmania undergraduate students aged between 17 and 61 years. Participants first completed the Australian Political Ideology Scale (APIS) online. A week later, the same participants were shown 10 pictures depicting either core disgust, contamination disgust, animal reminder disgust or a neutral mood, then completed the APIS again. The elicitation of contamination disgust caused a significant increase in conservative views across APIS scores (p = .018) while core and animal-reminder disgusts did not show effects. These findings suggest the effect of disgust on political ideology may be domain specific. This research is the first of its kind in an Australian population and contributes meaningful results to a growing field. Substantiation of these results in larger and international samples is justified.