Three studies further explored Skinner and Hudac's (2017) hypothesis that interracial couples elicit disgust. Using verbal and face emotion measures (Study 1), some participants reported more disgust toward interracial couples than same-race White and Black couples. In Study 2, only people higher in disgust sensitivity tended to “guess” that rapidly presented images of interracial (vs. White) couples were disgusting. Study 3 used a novel image classification paradigm that presented couples side-by-side with neutral or disgusting images. Participants took longer to decide whether target images were disgusting only when interracial (vs. White) couples appeared next to neutral images. Greater sexual disgust heightened this difference. Mixed evidence suggesting an association of disgust with Black couples also emerged in Studies 2 and 3. Thus, the disgust–interracial romance association may only emerge under certain conditions, and the current research offers limited support for the hypothesis that disgust response is exclusively linked to interracial unions.
BaayenR. H. (2008). Analyzing linguistic data: A practical introduction to statistics using R. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511801686
2.
BarrD. J.LevyR.ScheepersC.TilyH. J. (2013). Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language, 68(3), 255–278.
3.
BatesD.MächlerM.BolkerB. M.WalkerS. C. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67(1), 1–48. https://doi.org/10.18637/jss.v067.i01
4.
ChapmanH. A.AndersonA. K. (2013). Things rank and gross in nature: A review and synthesis of moral disgust. Psychological Bulletin, 139(2), 300–327.
5.
ChuangR.WilkinsC.TanM.MeadC. (2020). Racial minorities’ attitudes toward interracial couples: An intersection of race and gender. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430219899482
6.
CraigA. D. (2009). How do you feel—now? The anterior insula and human awareness. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(1), 59–70. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2555
7.
CrawfordJ. T.InbarY.MaloneyV. (2014). Disgust sensitivity selectively predicts attitudes toward groups that threaten (or uphold) traditional sexual morality. Personality and Individual Differences, 70, 218–223. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.07.001
CurtisV.de BarraM.AungerR. (2011). Disgust as an adaptive system for disease avoidance behaviour. Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, 366(1563), 389–401.
10.
Giner-SorollaR.RussellP. S. (2019). Not just disgust: Fear and anger also relate to intergroup dehumanization. Collabra: Psychology, 5(1), 56. https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.211
11.
GlaserJ.DixitJ.GreenD. P. (2002). Studying hate crime with the internet: What makes racists advocate racial violence?Journal of Social Issues, 58(1), 177–193. https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-4560.00255
12.
GrayK.ScheinC.WardA. F. (2014). The myth of harmless wrongs in moral cognition: Automatic dyadic completion from sin to suffering. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(4), 1600–1615. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036149
13.
GutierrezR.Giner-SorollaR. (2007). Anger, disgust, and presumption of harm as reactions to taboo-breaking behaviors. Emotion, 7(4), 853.
14.
HaidtJ. (2001). The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 108(4), 814–834. https://doi.org/10.1037//0033-295X.108.4.814
15.
HaidtJ.BjorklundF.MurphyS. (2000). Moral dumbfounding: When intuition finds no reason [Unpublished manuscript]. University of Virginia.
16.
HodsonG.CostelloK. (2007). Interpersonal disgust, ideological orientations, and dehumanization as predictors of intergroup attitudes. Psychological Science, 18(8), 691–698. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2007.01962.x
JuddC. M.WestfallJ.KennyD. A. (2012). Treating stimuli as a random factor in social psychology: A new and comprehensive solution to a pervasive but largely ignored problem. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(1), 54–69. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028347
20.
KilleD. R.TseC. T. (2017). Whose family fits? Categorization and evaluation of same-sex and cross-race-parent families. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 20(1), 109–124. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430215595106
21.
LangP. J.BradleyM. M.CuthbertB. N. (2008). International affective picture system (IAPS): Affective ratings of pictures and instruction manual. University of Florida.
22.
LewandowskiD. A.JacksonL. A. (2001). Perceptions of interracial couples: Prejudice at the dyadic level. Journal of Black Psychology, 27(3), 288–303. https://doi.org/10.1177/0095798401027003003
23.
LeysC.LeyC.KleinO.BernardP.LicataL. (2013). Detecting outliers: Do not use standard deviation around the mean, use absolute deviation around the median. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(4), 764–766. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2013.03.013
NavarreteC. D.FesslerD. M. T. (2006). Disease avoidance and ethnocentrism: The effects of disease vulnerability and disgust sensitivity on intergroup attitudes. Evolution and Human Behavior, 27(4), 270–282. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2005.12.001
26.
OatenM.StevensonR. J.CaseT. I. (2009). Disgust as a disease-avoidance mechanism. Psychological Bulletin, 135(2), 303–321. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014823
27.
OatenM.StevensonR. J.CaseT. I. (2011). Disease avoidance as a functional basis for stigmatization. Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, 366(1583), 3433–3452.
28.
OlatunjiB. O.CislerJ. M.DeaconB. J.ConnollyK.LohrJ. M. (2007). The disgust propensity and sensitivity scale-revised: Psychometric properties and specificity in relation to anxiety disorder symptoms. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 21(7), 918–930. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2006.12.005
RozinP.LoweryL.ImadaS.HaidtJ. (1999). The CAD triad hypothesis: A mapping between three moral emotions (contempt, anger, disgust) and three moral codes (community, autonomy, divinity). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(4), 574.
32.
RussellP. S.Giner-SorollaR. (2013). Bodily moral disgust: What it is, how it is different from anger, and why it is an unreasoned emotion. Psychological Bulletin, 139(2), 328–351. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029319
33.
SkinnerA. L.HudacC. M. (2017). “Yuck, you disgust me!” Affective bias against interracial couples. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 68, 68–77. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2016.05.008
34.
SkinnerA. L.RaeJ. R. (2018). A robust bias against interracial couples among White and Black respondents, relative to multiracial respondents. Social Psychological and Personality Science. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550618783713
TerrizziJ. A.ShookN. J.VentisW. L. (2010). Disgust: A predictor of social conservatism and prejudicial attitudes toward homosexuals. Personality and Individual Differences, 49(6), 587–592. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2010.05.024
37.
TrailT. E.GoffP. A.BradburyT. N.KarneyB. R. (2012). The costs of racism for marriage: How racial discrimination hurts, and ethnic identity protects, newlywed marriages among Latinos. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38(4), 454–465. EDSWSS. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167211429450
38.
TyburJ. M.LiebermanD.GriskeviciusV. (2009). Microbes, mating, and morality: Individual differences in three functional domains of disgust. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(1), 103–122. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015474
39.
TyburJ. M.LiebermanD.KurzbanR.DeScioliP. (2013). Disgust: Evolved function and structure. Psychological Review, 120(1), 65–84. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030778
40.
WoffordN.DefeverA. M.ChopikW. J. (2019). The vicarious effects of discrimination: How partner experiences of discrimination affect individual health. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 10(1), 121–130. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550617746218
41.
YoungL.TsoiL. (2013). When mental states matter, when they don’t, and what that means for morality. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 7(8), 585–604. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12044
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
