Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dk4vv Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T13:20:49.585Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Disgust and disgust-driven moral concerns predict support for restrictions on transgender bathroom access

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2020

Matthew E. Vanaman Open the ORCID record for Matthew E. Vanaman [Opens in a new window]  and
Hanah A. Chapman
Matthew E. Vanaman*
Affiliation:
CUNY Graduate Center
Hanah A. Chapman
Affiliation:
Brooklyn College
*
Correspondence: Matthew Vanaman, Basic and Applied Social Psychology, The Graduate Center, CUNY, 365 5th Ave, New York, NY 10016; Email: [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

Many U.S. states have proposed policies that restrict bathroom access to an individual’s birth sex. These policies have had widespread effects on safety for transgender and gender-nonconforming people, as well as on state economies. In this registered report, we assessed the role of disgust in support for policies that restrict transgender bathroom access. We found that sensitivity to pathogen disgust was positively associated with support for bathroom restrictions; sexual and injury disgust were unrelated. We also examined the role of disgust-driven moral concerns, known as purity concerns, as well as harm-related moral concerns in support for bathroom restrictions. While concerns about harm to cisgender and transgender people predicted support for bathroom restrictions, purity was a much stronger predictor. Also, purity partially mediated the link between pathogen disgust and support for bathroom restrictions, even after accounting for harm concerns. Findings and implications are discussed.

Keywords

transgender rightsbathroom billspolitical policyemotiondisgustmoral psychologypurityharm
Type
Article
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 39 , Special Issue 2: Special Issue: Disgust and Political Attitudes , Fall 2020 , pp. 200 - 214
Copyright
© Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Berman, M. (2017, March 27). North Carolina’s bathroom bill cost the state at least $3.7 billion, new analysis finds. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/03/27/north-carolinas-bathroom-bill-cost-the-state-at-least-3-7-billion-new-analysis-finds/Google Scholar
Billard, T. J. (2018). Attitudes toward transgender men and women: development and validation of a new measure. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 387.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Curtis, V., & Biran, A. (2001). Dirt, disgust, and disease. Is hygiene in our genes? Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 44(1), 17–31.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fernandez, M., & Blinder, A. (2015, November 4). Opponents of Houston rights measure focused on bathrooms, and won. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/05/us/houston-anti-discrimination-bathroom-ordinance.htmlGoogle Scholar
GenIUSS Group. (2014). Best practices for asking questions to identify transgender and other gender minority respondents on population-based surveys. Herman, J.L. (Ed.). Los Angeles: Williams Institute.Google Scholar
Graham, J., Haidt, J., Koleva, S., Motyl, M., Iyer, R., Wojcik, S. P., & Ditto, P. H. (2013). Moral foundations theory: The pragmatic validity of moral pluralism. In Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 47, pp. 55–130). Academic Press.Google Scholar
Graham, J., Haidt, J., & Nosek, B. A. (2009). Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(5), 1029–1046.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Graham, J., Nosek, B. A., Haidt, J., Iyer, R., Koleva, S., & Ditto, P. H. (2011). Mapping the moral domain. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101(2), 366–385.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Graham, J. (2015). Explaining Away Differences in Moral Judgment: Comment on Gray and Keeney (2015). Social Psychological and Personality Science, 6(8), 869–873. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550615592242CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grant, J. M., Mottet, L., Tanis, J. E., Harrison, J., Herman, J., & Keisling, M. (2011). Injustice at every turn: A report of the national transgender discrimination survey. Washington, DC: National Center for Transgender Equality.Google Scholar
Gray, K., & Wegner, D. M. (2012). Morality takes two: Dyadic morality and mind perception. In Mikulincer, M. & Shaver, P. R. (Eds.), The social psychology of morality: Exploring the causes of good and evil. (pp. 109–127). American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/13091-006Google Scholar
Gray, K., Schein, C., & Ward, A. (2014). The myth of harmless wrongs in moral cognition: Automatic dyadic completion from sin to suffering. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 1600–1615.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gray, K., & Keeney, J. E. (2015). Impure or just weird? Scenario sampling bias raises questions about the foundation of morality. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 6(8), 859–868.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grinberg, E., & Stewart, D. (2017, March 7). 3 myths that shape the transgender bathroom debate. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2017/03/07/health/transgender-bathroom-law-facts-myths/index.htmlGoogle Scholar
Haidt, J., McCauley, C., & Rozin, P. (1994). Individual differences in sensitivity to disgust: A scale sampling seven domains of disgust elicitors. Personality and Individual Differences, 16(5), 701–713.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haidt, J., & Graham, J. (2009). Planet of the Durkheimians, where community, authority, and sacredness are foundations of morality. In Jost, J. T., Kay, A. C. & Thorisdottir, H. (Eds.), Social and psychological bases of ideology and system justification. (pp. 371–401). Oxford University Press. https://doi-org.ezproxy.gc.cuny.edu/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195320916.003.015CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayes, A. F. (2018). Introduction to mediation, moderation, and conditional process analysis: A regression-based approach (2 nd ed.). Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Herbst, J., Jacobs, E. D., Finlayson, T., McKleyroy, V. S., Neumann, M. S., & Crepaz, N. (2008). Transgender HIV prevalence and risk behaviors. AIDS and Behavior, 12(1), 1–17.Google ScholarPubMed
Herman, J. L. (2013). Gendered restrooms and minority stress: The public regulation of gender and its impact on transgender people’s lives. Journal of Public Management & Social Policy, 19(1), 65–80.Google Scholar
Inbar, Y., Pizarro, D. A., & Bloom, P. (2009). Conservatives are more easily disgusted than liberals. Cognition and Emotion, 23(1), 714–725.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Inbar, Y., Pizarro, D. A., Knobe, J., & Bloom, P. (2009). Disgust sensitivity predicts intuitive disapproval of gays. Emotion, 9(3), 435–439.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Koleva, S. P., Graham, J., Iyer, R., Ditto, P. H., & Haidt, J. (2012). Tracing the threads: How five moral concerns (especially purity) help explain culture war attitudes. Journal of Research in Personality, 46(2), 184–194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kugler, M., Jost, J. T., & Noorbaloochi, S. (2014). Another look at moral foundations theory: Do authoritarianism and social dominance orientation explain liberal-conservative differences in “moral” intuitions? Social Justice Research, 27(4), 413-431.Google Scholar
Kupfer, T. R. (2018). Why are injuries disgusting? Comparing pathogen avoidance and empathy accounts. Emotion, 18(7), 959–970.10.1037/emo0000395CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kurzban, R., & Leary, M. R. (2001). Evolutionary origins of stigmatization: the functions of social exclusion. Psychological Bulletin, 127(2), 187–208.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lax, J. R., & Phillips, J. H. (2009). Gay rights in the states: Public opinion and policy responsiveness. American Political Science Review, 103(3), 367–386.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landmann, H., & Hess, U. (2018). Testing moral foundation theory: Are specific moral emotions elicited by specific moral transgressions? Journal of Moral Education, 47(1), 34–47. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2017.1350569CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landy, J. F., & Goodwin, G. P. (2015). Does Incidental Disgust Amplify Moral Judgment? A Meta-Analytic Review of Experimental Evidence. 19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levin, D. (2019, July 23). North Carolina reaches settlement on “bathroom bill.” The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/23/us/north-carolina-transgender-bathrooms.htmlGoogle Scholar
Lopez, G. (2016, May 13). Myth #3: Letting trans people use the bathroom or locker room matching their gender identity is dangerous. Vox. https://www.vox.com/identities/2016/5/13/17938102/transgender-people-bathrooms-locker-rooms-schoolsGoogle Scholar
McCarthy, J. (2017, May 18). Americans split over new LGBT protections, restroom policies. Gallup. https://news.gallup.com/poll/210887/americans-split-new-lgbt-protections-restroom-policies.aspxGoogle Scholar
Miller, P. R., Flores, A. R., Haider-Markel, D. P., Lewis, D. C., Tadlock, B. L., & Taylor, J. K. (2017). Transgender politics as body politics: effects of disgust sensitivity and authoritarianism on transgender rights attitudes. Politics, Groups, and Identities, 5(1), 4–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stewart-Cousins, A. (2019, January 15). Senate Majority Passes GENDA & Ban Conversion Therapy. NY State Senate. https://www.nysenate.gov/newsroom/articles/2019/andrea-stewart-cousins/senate-majority-passes-genda-ban-conversion-therapyGoogle Scholar
The New York Times . (2017, February 24). Understanding transgender access laws. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/24/us/transgender-bathroom-law.htmlGoogle Scholar
Olatunji, B., Williams, N. L., Tolin, D. F., Abramowitz, J. S., Sawchuk, C. N., Lohr, J. M., & Elwood, L. S. (2007). The Disgust Scale: Item analysis, factor structure, and suggestions for refinement. Psychological Assessment, 19(3), 281–297.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Posner, S. (2018, January 22). How a local religious-right faction launched anti-trans bathroom debate. Rolling Stone. https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/anti-trans-bathroom-debate-how-a-local-religious-right-faction-launched-a-national-movement-203248/Google Scholar
Rozin, P., Haidt, J., & McCauley, C. (2000). Disgust. In Lewis, M. & Haviland-Jones, J. (Eds.), Handbook of emotions (2nd ed., pp. 637–653). Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Schaller, M., & Park, J. H. (2011). The behavioral immune system (and why it matters). Current Directions in Psychological Science, 20(2), 99–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schein, C., & Gray, K. (2015). The unifying moral dyad: Liberals and conservatives share the same harm-based moral template. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 41(8), 1147–1163.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schein, C., Ritter, R. S., & Gray, K. (2016). Harm mediates the disgust-immorality link. Emotion, 16(6), 862–876. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000167CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schein, C., & Gray, K. (2017). The theory of dyadic morality: Reinventing moral judgment by redefining harm. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 22(1), 32–70.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Seidel, A., & Prinz, J. (2013). Sound morality: Irritating and icky noises amplify judgments in divergent moral domains. Cognition, 127(1), 1–5.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Soroka, S. N., & Wlezien, C. (2010). Degrees of democracy: Politics, public opinion, and policy. Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tadlock, B. L. (2015). Issue framing and transgender politics: an examination of interest group websites and media coverage. In Taylor, J. K. & Haider-Markel, D. P. (Eds.), Transgender rights and politics groups, issue framing, policy adaptation (pp. 25–48). University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Tilburt, J. C., James, K. M., Jenkins, S. M., Antiel, R. M., Curlin, F. A., & Rasinski, K. A. (2013). “Righteous minds” in health care: Measurement and explanatory value of social intuitionism in accounting for the moral judgments in a sample of US physicians. PLOS ONE, 8(9), e73379.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Terrizzi, J. A. Jr, Shook, N. J., & McDaniel, M. A. (2013). The behavioral immune system and social conservatism: A meta-analysis. Evolution and Human Behavior, 34(2), 105–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tybur, J. M., Lieberman, D., & Griskevicius, V. (2009). Microbes, mating, and morality: individual differences in three functional domains of disgust. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(1), 103–122.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tybur, J. M., Lieberman, D., Kurzban, R., & DeScioli, P. (2012). Disgust: Evolved function and structure. Psychological Review, 120(1), 65–84.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Waters, E. (2017). Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and HIV-affected hate violence in 2016. New York, NY: National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs.Google Scholar
Wagemans, F. M. A., Brandt, M. J., & Zeelenberg, M. (2018). Disgust sensitivity is primarily associated with purity-based moral judgments. Emotion, 18(2), 277–289. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000359CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wagemans, F. M. A., Brandt, M. J., & Zeelenberg, M. (2018). Disgust sensitivity and moral judgments of purity: The role of transgression weirdness. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/c5h42CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, J. (2015, August 24). Houston haters launch website, release disgusting anti-LGBT radio ad. Towleroad. http://www.towleroad.com/2015/08/houston-hateGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Vanaman and Chapman supplementary material

Vanaman and Chapman supplementary material

Download Vanaman and Chapman supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 158.2 KB