ArticleRoyal Society open science2018
Body odour disgust sensitivity predicts authoritarian attitudes.
Article in Royal Society open science, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- An authoritarianism-compatible text changes British attitudes towards EU immigration.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Prejudice, Proxemic Space, and Social Odor: The Representation of the 'Outsider' Through an Evolutionary Metaverse Psychology Perspective.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- Italian validation of the body odor disgust scale.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2024Article
- Body odour disgust sensitivity is associated with xenophobia: evidence from nine countries across five continents.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- The psychological causes and societal consequences of authoritarianism.Nature reviews psychology · 2023Review
- Discriminating between sick and healthy faces based on early sickness cues: an exploratory analysis of sex differences.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2023Article
- Why are conservatives less concerned about the coronavirus (COVID-19) than liberals? Comparing political, experiential, and partisan messaging explanations.Personality and individual differences · 2021Article
- Infection threat shapes our social instincts.Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · 2021Review
- An Overprotective Nose? Implicit Bias Is Positively Related to Individual Differences in Body Odor Disgust Sensitivity.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Article
- Article
- Body Odor Disgust Sensitivity Predicts Moral Harshness Toward Moral Violations of Purity.Frontiers in psychology · 2019Article
- Body odour disgust sensitivity predicts authoritarian attitudes.Royal Society open science · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Authoritarianism has resurfaced as a research topic in political psychology, as it appears relevant to explain current political trends. Authoritarian attitudes have been consistently linked to feelings of disgust, an emotion that is thought to have evolved to protect the organism from contamination. We hypothesized that body odour disgust sensitivity (BODS) might be associated with authoritarianism, as chemo-signalling is a primitive system for regulating interpersonal contact and disease avoidance, which are key features also in authoritarianism. We used well-validated scales for measuring BODS, authoritarianism and related constructs. Across two studies, we found that BODS is positively related to authoritarianism. In a third study, we showed a positive association between BODS scores and support for Donald Trump, who, at the time of data collection, was a presidential candidate with an agenda described as resonating with authoritarian attitudes. Authoritarianism fully explained the positive association between BODS and support for Donald Trump. Our findings highlight body odour disgust as a new and promising domain in political psychology research. Authoritarianism and BODS might be part of the same disease avoidance framework, and our results contribute to the growing evidence that contemporary social attitudes might be rooted in basic sensory functions.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.