Infectious Disease, Disgust, and Imagining the Other

Abstract

In this article, I examine the American public’s reaction to two recent infectious disease outbreaks: Ebola and Zika. Using a set of parallel questions, I investigate the ways in which public reactions to these distinct threats diverge and converge. I compare the microfoundations of public reactions to these two disparate infectious diseases—and, specifically, I use a behavioral immune system account to examine how disgust sensitivity and group-based prejudice shape understandings of these diseases and policies relating to them. I find the most prominent predictor of views on Ebola and Zika is disgust sensitivity—particularly individual differences in disgust-based reactions to contamination. The evidence in this article suggests that public opinion on these policies is grounded not necessarily in the cold cognition of scientific risk management but in visceral disgust reactions—reactions that can easily be distorted by imagination.