Research: I Don’t Hate, I’m Just Disgusted

When a person defines their out-group, meaning where they don’t belong, they actually strengthen their personal identity, both for itself as well as towards others. As social creatures, we all do this regularly before our in-group, but also before our out-group. 

The feelings people show towards members of their out-group occupies researchers in the field of Social Psychology. A physical sense of disgust is negative, but unlike other negative feelings such as anger and hatred, they are not distinctly linked to violence and therefore are more tolerant. Research by Dr. Maayan Katzir of Bar-Ilan's Conflict Resolution, Management and Negotiation Graduate Program, along with her associates Matan Hoffman and Prof. Nira Liberman of Tel-Aviv University, predicts what the sense of disgust expresses, what can be extrapolated from it about the approaches, beliefs and character of the person expressing disgust, and how it serves them. 

The research, which offers a revised look at the sense of physical disgust, predicted that expressing disgust towards a social group manifests a belief that said group is essentially negative, meaning that its negativity has a biological basis, with clear boundaries, and that its members resemble each other in a set of negative qualities that are innate to them. Furthermore, based on the insight that those who are disgusting are perceived as contradicting what is moral and pure, the researchers predicted that expressing disgust towards a social group also expresses moral censure of that same group. 

The research was divided into three experiments in which it was found that expressing disgust towards homosexuals and Arabs (as opposed to anger) expresses a negative and essentialist approach towards those groups, and their perception as immoral and impure. Expressing disgust expressed an approach that is more preventative, hence also less violent, and less subject to prejudice (and therefore more legitimate) in comparison to hatred. Therefore, although disgust, much like hatred, expresses a deep negative approach towards a social group, its expression takes responsibility from those who express it and decreases social condemnation compared to hatred. Similar results were achieved in another experiment, which was part of this research, in which beliefs were expressed towards unidentified social groups, with the participants of the research having to determine which feelings are attached to which belief.  

For the article: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2018-41061-001