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\title{What lies beneath? Fear vs.\ disgust as affective predictors of absolutist opposition to genetically modified food and other new technologies}

\author{
Edward Royzman\thanks{Department of Psychology, University of
  Pennsylvania, 3720 Walnut Street, Solomon Lab Building,
  Philadelphia, PA 19104. Email: royzman@psych.upenn.edu.}
\and
Corey Cusimano\thanks{Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania}
\and
Robert F. Leeman\thanks{University of Florida, Department of Health Education and Behavior;
Yale School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry}
}

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  \jdate \hfill Fear vs.\ disgust about GMOs \qquad}
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\begin{onecolabstract}
%\end{latexonly}
In line with earlier research, a multi-phase study found a significant
positive association between a widely used measure of trait disgust and
people’s tendency to favor absolutist (non-consequentialist)
restrictions on genetically modified food (GMF). However, a more
nuanced high-granularity approach showed that it was individual
sensitivity to fear (specifically, a tendency to feel \textit{creeped
out} by strange and subtly deviant events) rather than a tendency to be
\textit{disgusted} (orally inhibited) by these events that was a unique
predictor of absolutist opposition to GMF and other types of new
technology. This finding is consistent with prior theorizing and
research demonstrating fear to be “the major determiner of public
perception and acceptance of risk for a wide range of hazards” related
to new technology (e.g., nuclear power) (Slovic \& Peters, 2006,
p.\ 322). The present study calls attention to the importance of
conducting future assessments of \textit{disgust} (and other affective
constructs) in a manner that, among other things, recognizes the
substantial disconnect between theoretical and lay meanings of the term
and illustrates how a policy-guiding result may arise from
a sheer miscommunication between a researcher and a subject. 

\smallskip
\noindent
Keywords: GMO, disgust, fear, technology, moral

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{\renewcommand{\thefootnote}{}

\footnotetext{

  We would like to extend our deepest thanks to Paul Rozin, Sydney
  Scott, two anonymous reviewers, and Jonathan Baron, for their
  comments on an earlier version of the paper.

Copyright: \copyright\ 2017.
The authors license this article under the terms of the
\href{http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/}{Creative Commons
  Attribution 3.0 License.}
}}

\saythanks

\section{Introduction}

In spite of the wide-ranging scientific consensus that genetically
modified organisms have a potential to yield significant economic
benefits for the world’s least well-off while posing no meaningful
risks to the natural environment and human health, genetically modified
foods (GMFs) continue to be a topic of controversy and debate both
within the Member States of the European Union (EU) and around the
globe (European Commission, 2010; Blancke Van Breusegem, De Jaeger,
Braeckman \& Van Montagu, 2015). While public opposition is especially
pronounced within the EU, the anti-GMO movement has been steadily
gaining speed within the U.S. (compare Blizzard, 2003 with Funk, 2015),
with most contemporary Americans (57 percent) viewing GMFs as
“generally unsafe” to eat (Funk, 2015) (see also Bain \& Dandachi, 2014
for some recent legislative initiatives favoring the anti-GMF
contingent). 

Some scholars recently proposed that continued opposition to GMF is
affectively based (e.g., Blancke et al., 2015), with several studies
documenting a robust link between GMF and \textit{fear} (Cox \& Evans,
2008; Kahan, 2016; Laros \& Steenkamp, 2004; Rzymski \& Królczyk,
2016; Ventura, Frisio, Ferrazzi \& Siletti, 2016). For instance, Cox
and Evans (2008) found that people’s general neophobia (anxiety
towards novel entities and events) was correlated with their
negativity and concerns regarding “novel food technologies” (p.\ 704),
including GMF. Similarly, Kahan’s (Kahan, 2016) recent results (based
on a nationally representative sample of about 1200) suggest that
people’s concerns over GMFs were significantly correlated with a
variety of “random-ass risk concerns measured by the Scaredy-cat
scale” (the scale measuring a propensity to feel threatened by an
eclectic set of dangers, ranging from armed car-jackings to drownings
of children in swimming pools).  These proposals echo prior
psychological research arguing that opposition to other forms of new
technology (e.g., nuclear power; Fischhoff, Slovic, Lichtenstein, Read
\& Combs, 1978) has “its roots in ‘gut reactions’ (strong fear) and
the construal of this technology as ‘new’\,” (Sjoberg, 2000, p.\ 353;
see Slovic \& Peters, 2006 for an overview). Further studies of public
opposition to the construction of nuclear power plants (van der Pligt,
Eiser \& Spears, 1986) revealed that a perceived potential for unknown
yet catastrophic risks was a major source of the fear.

Pertinently, a recent on-line survey (McAnrew \& Koehnke, 2016)
highlights the importance of differentiating between fear as a
response to a definite or fully realized threat (e.g., an armed
assailant causing an urge to flee) and fear associated with the mere
potential for a threat (e.g., a strangely-dressed individual eyeing
you intently from the shadows), with the latter commonly conveyed by
the slang expression “creeped out”. In their analysis of the
phenomenon, McAndrew \& Koehnke (2016) found that contra-normative
behavior (disregard for social rules) and appearance, e.g., shabby
dress and poor hygiene, were common triggers of “creepiness”, with
“creepy” individuals’ behaviors being associated with
higher-than-neutral ratings of unpredictability or
uncertainty.\footnote{Intriguingly, the list of creepiest “ratings of
  occupations” (p.\ 12) was topped by the (ostensibly unpredictable)
  clowns, but also featured clergy and taxi drivers.} This has
important theoretical implications: to the extent that the fear of
unknown or opaque risks has been said to lie “at the heart of public
opposition” to GMO (Hossein et al., 2002, p.\ 8; see also Nelson,
2001) --- just as it appears to lie at the heart of public opposition to
other forms of new technology --- individual variation in propensity to
feel \textit{creeped out }would appear to be a logical candidate for
the affective disposition underlying the public’s opposition to GMF.

However, an important recent report (Scott et al., 2016) concludes
that widespread opposition to GMF may in fact be rooted in
\textit{disgust}.  Most intriguingly, Scott and colleagues have found
that within a representative U.S. sample of on-line participants,
individuals higher in trait disgust (as gauged by the 25-item Disgust
Scale-Revised [DS-R] [Olatunji et al., 2007]) were significantly more
inclined toward “absolutist” (strongly non-consequentialist)
opposition to GMF, being more likely to endorse a binary statement
that GMF ought to be proscribed “no matter how great the benefits and
minor the risks from allowing it” (Scott et al., 2016, p.\ 317, based
on Baron \& Spranca, 1997). (Also of major importance is Scott et
al.’s [2016] result that more than 70 percent of on-line GMF opponents
appeared to be opposed to it for “absolutist” reasons, i.e.,
“regardless of consequentialist considerations” [p.\ 317]).

Here we contend that, while Scott et al.’s (2016) findings are
generative and noteworthy, their interpretability is seriously
constrained by the well-established disconnect between theoretical and
lay meanings of \textit{disgust} (the term heavily utilized, alongside
similarly non-specific “bothered” and “upset”, in DS-R, the disgust
measure that they used) (e.g., Nabi, 2002; Royzman \& Sabini, 2001;
Royzman, Leeman \& Sabini, 2008). “Theoretically, \textit{disgust}
refers to the offence taken to noxious objects or ideas that
evoke…nausea” (Nabi, 2002, p.\ 695) or feeling physically revolted “at
the prospect of oral incorporation” (Rozin and Fallon, 1987, p.\ 23;
Angyal, 1941; Olatunji \& Sawchuk, 2005; Rozin, Haidt \& McCauley,
2008; see also Darwin, 1872/1965); as noted by Rozin et al.\ (2008),
disgust is a category of food rejection (p.\ 759), with most
definitions of disgust “focus[ing] on the mouth and real or imagined
ingestion” (Rozin et al., 2008, p.\ 758). On the other hand, its
“common usage \dots appears to reflect that which is not only
repellent but also irritating or annoying” (Nabi, 2002, p.\ 695)
(Kayyal, Pochedly, McCarthy \& Russell, 2015; Royzman \& Sabini,
2001). Accordingly, the lexical definition of disgust describes it as
‘‘a strong feeling of dislike, finding a thing very unpleasant, or
against one’s principles’’ (Ehrlich et al., 1980) and two recent
studies (Kayyal et al., 2015; Landy \& Piazza, 2016) found that
reports of disgust, fear, irritation, and general distress were highly
inter-correlated (see also Royzman, Leeman \& Sabini, 2008), lending
credence to the concern that (at least on-line) participants are using
the term (“disgust”/“disgusted”) in a \textit{low-granularity} manner
(Lindquist \& Barrett, 2008), i.e., as an expression of unspecified
aversion or “dislike” (Kayyal et al., 2015, p.\ 8; see also Royzman
\& Sabini, 2001). (For present purposes, \textit{granularity} refers
to the degree to which a given affective descriptor represents a
discreet and qualitatively unique experience, [with e.g., “I have a
gagging sensation” being inherently more granular than “This bothers
me”], thus expediting more clear communication between a researcher
and a subject.)

It is of particular concern that, in spite of a substantial body of
work testifying to the prevalence of food neophobia in humans (Pliner
\& Hobden, 1992) and classic studies linking opposition to new
technology with fear, Scott et al.\ (2016) did not explicitly assess
fear. The only relevant affective construct explicitly assessed in
addition to trait disgust was trait \textit{anger}, a bona fide
\textit{approach} emotion, making disgust the only representative of
its (avoidance-related) class.  (Given that negative feelings do
co-occur and given that having disgust, even if granularly assessed,
as the only response option might have caused it to be used as a
stand-in for other kinds of negative affect, it would be imperative
that future variants of a trait disgust scale feature a menu of
non-disgust options including fear and normative
disapproval). Considering these complications, it remains unclear
which affective sensitivities (fear vs.\ disgust vs.\ normative
disapproval), if any, are genuinely at work when people oppose GMF.

Another methodological concern stems from Scott et al.’s decision to
assess trait disgust and GMF-related absolutism in the course of a
single 15-minute session (S. Scott, personal communication, January
27, 2017), with temporally contiguous GMF-related queries/scenarios
and disgust items being likely to tip off participants about the
study's overarching intent — establishing a positive association
between the extent of one’s opposition to GMF and the signature
food-related aversion that is disgust. At the very least, these
considerations raise a reasonable concern that, due to some
combination of demand characteristics and a deliberate effort to keep
one’s responses consistent across items, Scott et al.’s data provide a
somewhat inflated estimate of the disgust-GMF link. The validity of
these concerns is further underscored by several past studies (e.g.,
Fessler, Arguello, Mekdara \& Macias, 2003; Royzman, Leeman \& Baron,
2009; see also Royzman, Kim \& Leeman, 2015) that found no significant
association between \textit{disgust sensitivity} (DS) and
\textit{socio-moral evaluations} when special design features (time
delay, misdirection) were in place to make it appear that the measures
of morality and disgust were not conceptually aligned.

A further methodological concern stems from Scott et al.’s (2016) claim
of a special relationship between trait (or state) disgust and
opposition to GMF qua a purity-based prohibition (Scott et al., 2016,
p.\ 316; Haidt, 2012). However, given that GMF was the only new
technology assessed in the study, this claim is hard to accept. It seems
that, at a minimum, Scott et al.\ (2016) would have wanted to
demonstrate that the predictive powers of DS may extend to other new
technologies associated with purity-based concerns (e.g., stem cell
research) while \textit{not} extending to new technologies in general,
especially those (e.g., nuclear power) with historic ties to fear and
no apparent ties to food production.\footnote{ For the sake of
completeness, we note that Scott et al.\ (2016) also examined their
subjects’ opposition to dolphin-killing. However, given that GMF and
dolphin-killing differ in a multitude of ways, one would be
hard-pressed to see this as the optimal point of contrast. For one,
killing dolphins is not a form of new technology. Second, it poses no
perceived threat to one’s survival (or health) (in the manner that GMF,
nuclear power, or airplane travel could). Third, in terms of sheer
severity (Gray \& Schein, 2016), fostering new (and potentially risky)
forms of food production is no match for killing some of the most
lovable creatures on the planet (indeed about 5 times as many subjects
accepted GMF as dolphin-killing).} More generally, the claim of
a special association between purity and disgust has been greatly
problematized by two recent reviews (Cameron, Lindquist \& Gray, 2015;
Landy \& Goodwin, 2015). Having carefully analyzed all the available
data, Cameron, et al.\ (2015) found no specific association between
disgust and “purity violations”. Similarly, Landy and Goodwin’s (2015)
recent meta-analysis of the effects of incidental (experimentally
induced) disgust on moral cognition found that the effects of
incidental disgust on purity-based transgressions were no greater than
its effects on harm/rights-based transgressions (indeed, there was a
slight trend favoring the latter). 

To forestall these various concerns, we used the 7-item pathogen
sub-scale (TDDS-P) (a component of Tybur, Lieberman and Griskevicius’s
[2009] widely used Three Domains of Disgust Scale [TDDS]), a measure
highly correlated with and conceptually derived from the DS-R (Tybur
et al., 2009, used by Scott et al.). Though originally designed to
gauge pathogen-linked disgust, a recent study (Landy \& Piazza, 2016)
indicates that, due to the multi-faceted nature of its vignettes
(e.g., someone emitting foul odor in public could be alternatively
construed as gross, creepy, pitiful, or rude), the TDDS-P elicits a
wide range of negative reactions beyond disgust. Capitalizing on this
and other properties of the scale, we used a time-delay design (see
Royzman, Leeman \& Baron, 2009) in which the standard (“how
disgusting?”) administration of the scale was counterbalanced (at the
3 weeks interval) with a higher-granularity alternative, where the
affective reactions to each item were explored with far greater
specificity and depth.\footnote{In addition to being partly a
  true-false measure (and, thus, not lending itself easily to the
  high-granularity variation, where all questions were framed in terms
  of feeling intensity) and containing a series of items (e.g., a
  person walking through a cemetery) that have been argued (Tybur et
  al., 2009) to be more closely related to fear than disgust, the
  25-item DS-R employed by Scott et al.\ (2016) would have been
  difficult to implement in the present case due to its sheer length.
  Crossing 25 DR-R items with 12 high-granularity ratings (see below)
  would have resulted in a total of 300 separate questions for the
  high-granularity condition of the study (see Discussion for more).}
Subsequently (3 weeks later), the same subjects completed a
purportedly unrelated survey containing measures of socio-political
attitudes, including three items gauging their preference for
absolutist restrictions on GMF, nuclear power, and embryonic stem
cells.\footnote{ It is worth noting that, as our research was not
  primarily designed as a replication of Scott et al.\ (2016) --- our
  interest in the topic, i.e., the putative link between trait disgust
  and “purity”-based opposition to new technology, predates our
  familiarity with their work --- we did not and could not aspire to
  address all elements of their design. This includes the question of
  whether the prospect of personally consuming or contemplating
  someone else’s consumption of a genetically modified food could make
  one genuinely disgusted.} The design was most directly inspired by
our 2008 (Royzman et al., 2008) report on disgust as a potential
affective response to sibling incest. Across two studies, Royzman et
al.\ (2008, Study 1) asked subjects to rate their responses to this
type of vignette on a variety of scales, including the traditional
low-granularity measure of disgust (“how disgusted are you?”), the
three-part high-granularity measure of disgust as an oral inhibition
response (gagging, loss of appetite, nausea) (see below), a measure of
tactile inhibition (unwillingness to touch), a high granularity
measure of anger/disapproval, as well as (Study 2) a separate rating
of fear. The present study could be viewed as an extension of this
2008 approach to the trait-level analysis.

%\section{Study}

\section{Methods}

\paragraph{Subjects.} A total of 141 University of Pennsylvania
undergraduates took part in the study in exchange for extra credit. We
removed any subject who did not complete all three data collection
rounds, anyone who did not fully complete one of the surveys, or anyone
who was simultaneously exposed to both the low- and high-granularity
conditions in error. All statistical analyses were conducted on the
remaining 130 subjects (76 female) (retention rate 92.2 percent). The
sample encompassed a wide range of ethnic and national backgrounds,
with almost 40 percent of the sample reporting a country of origin
other than the U.S. (see Appendix C for details). 

\paragraph{Materials and procedure.} To manage reactivity concerns
(see Royzman, Leeman \& Baron, 2009), the main dataset was collected
in three rounds, comprised of 3 on-line surveys, followed by a
supplementary paper-and-pencil survey (see below). In Round 1, each
student was randomly assigned to either the standard (based on Tybur
et al., 2009) or high-granularity (see below) administration of
TDDS-P. In Round 2 (three weeks later), each subject was “re-assigned”
to the complementary condition of the survey, with those initially
exposed to the high-granularity administration being asked to compete
the standard/low-granularity variant and vice versa. It was stated
that the goal of “the two-part” study (referencing Rounds 1 and 2) was
to explore certain “psychometric properties of two versions of a
commonly used measure of affective responding.” Three weeks following
Round 2, subjects received the ostensibly unrelated “socio-political
attitudes survey”, which assessed their attitudes toward GMF and two
other new technologies with no ties to food production (stem cells and
nuclear power). It also included multiple additional measures
discussed below, fortifying the impression that the study was “about”
political and social attitudes in general.

One week later, a randomly selected subset of subjects (N = 42) received
a supplementary “word meaning check” survey (see Appendix A for
details) designed to ascertain that the subjects’ understanding of the
term “creeped out” matched the relevant understanding of the authors’
(fear associated with uncertainty of threat) (per McAndrew \& Koehnke
[2016]). The data indicated that it did. In line with McAndrew and
Koehnke (2016), subjects tended to associate “feeling creeped out” with
“nervousness/unease” regarding a \textit{potential} threat, but not
with certain danger or disgust, thus clearly conceptualizing “creeped
out” as a special member of the fear family.

% what is the "per" reference?

\paragraph{Rounds 1 and 2 (Affective Measures).} The standard
administration of TDDS-P was modeled after Tybur et al.\ (2009), with
the subjects being asked to rate “how disgusting” they found seven
pathogen-linked events (e.g., “Standing close to a person who has body
odor”) on a 7-point scale (0=not disgusting at all/6=extremely
disgusting). Verbatim low-granularity instructions were as follows:
“Please rate how \textit{disgusting} you find the concepts
described in the items (e.g. \textbf{Stepping on dog poop}),
where \textbf{0} means that \textit{you did not find the
concept disgusting at all} and \textbf{6} means
that \textit{you found the concept disgusting to an extreme
degree}.”

The seven scenarios we used were as follows (see Appendix B for further
information regarding counterbalancing): 

\medskip
\noindent
\_\_\_ Accidentally touching a person’s bloody cut. 

\noindent
\_\_\_ Seeing a cockroach run across the floor.

\noindent
\_\_\_ Seeing some mold on old leftovers in your refrigerator.

\noindent
\_\_\_ Shaking hands with a stranger who has sweaty palms.

\noindent
\_\_\_ Sitting next to someone who has red sores on their arm.

\noindent
\_\_\_ Standing close to a person who has body odor.

\noindent
\_\_\_ Stepping on dog poop.

\medskip In the high-granularity variant of the scale, subjects rated
the same seven vignettes, indicating in each case how much it made
them feel specific sensations or desires on a scale from 0 (not at
all) to 6 (extremely). Verbatim high-granularity instructions were as
follows: “The following items describe a variety of concepts. Please
rate the extent to which each concept (e.g. \textbf{Stepping on dog
  poop}) makes you feel certain sensations and desires (e.g., feeling
creeped out, feeling physically nauseated, wanting to run away,
wanting to tell someone off) where \textbf{0} means that you
\textit{did not experience a given sensation/desire at all} and
\textbf{6 }means that \textit{you experienced it to an extreme
  degree}. You will do this for seven different concepts.”  Rating
scales (with scales and scenarios counterbalanced as described in
Appendix B) were as follows:

\medskip
\noindent
\textit{Oral inhibition (OI):}

\medskip
\noindent
[Stepping on dog poop] makes me feel physically nauseated

\noindent
[\dots] makes me gag

\noindent
[\dots] makes me lose my appetite 

\medskip
\noindent
\textit{Disapprove:}

\noindent
[\dots] makes me want to tell someone off

\noindent
[\dots] makes me want to disapprove of someone

\noindent
[\dots] makes me want to reprimand someone

\medskip
\noindent
\textit{Epidermal discomfort (ED):}

\noindent
[\dots] makes me feel a crawling sensation on my skin

\noindent
[\dots] makes me want to shake something off me

\medskip
\noindent
\textit{Creeped out:}

\noindent
[\dots] makes me feel creeped out

\medskip
\noindent
\textit{Run away:}

\noindent
[\dots] makes me want to run away

\medskip
\noindent
\textit{Other:}

\noindent
[\dots] makes me feel like crying 

\noindent
[\dots] makes me feel happy

\medskip
As indicated above, we obtained a total of \textbf{12} high-granularity
ratings for each vignette (both scenarios and measures were
randomized). The ratings included a three item-measure of \textit{Oral
inhibition} or \textit{OI} (nausea, gagging, loss of appetite) (e.g.,
Royzman et al., 2008), a construct logically derived from the
theoretical meaning of disgust as a category of food rejection (Angyal,
1941; Darwin, 1872/1965; Nabi, 2002; Olatunji \& Sawchuk, 2005; Royzman
et al., 2008; Rozin and Fallon, 1987; Rozin et al., 2008; Yoder, Widen,
\& Russell, 2016; see also an extended discussion of this point in
Royzman \& Sabini, 2001).\footnote{ Consistent with this
operationalization, Darwin (1872/1965) described the facial attributes
of “extreme disgust” as “expressed by movements round the mouth
identical with those preparatory to the act of vomiting’’ (p.\ 257) and
the facial expression shown to do the best job of differentiating
disgust from other affective states (including anger) is known as the
“sick face” (raised lower eyelid, raised cheeks, raised upper lip, and
jaw drop) produced by asking a professional actress to convey to her
audience that she was feeling sick and was about to vomit (Widen,
Pochedly, Pieloch \& Russell, 2013).} In keeping with disgust’s
stipulated adaptive origins (Rozin \& Fallon, 1987; Royzman \& Sabini,
2001; Tybur et al., 2009), the three components of OI (nausea, gagging,
loss of appetite) have their functional counterparts in the (a)
regurgitation of content from the gut, (b) ejection of content from the
mouth, and (c) avoidance of any further incorporation into the mouth,
respectively. Also included was a two-item measure of \textit{Epidermal
Discomfort} (\textit{ED}) (a crawling sensation on one’s skin, desire
to shake something off) designed to capture a set of responses that are
psychologically divergent from disgust (Blake, Yih, Zhao, Sung \&
Harmon-Jones, 2016), but appear to share its key function of pathogen
avoidance. 

To gauge fearfulness or sensitivity to threat, subjects were asked to
report the extent to which each of the seven TDDS-P scenarios made them
“feel creeped out” (\textit{Creeped out}) and “want[ing] to run away”
(\textit{Run away}) (see the Supplementary Survey in Appendix A and
McAndrew \& Koehnke [2016] for the validation of “creeped out” as a
fear-like state). 

Finally, our 12-item assessment procedure encompassed a three-item
measure of Normative Disapproval (Disapproval) (\textit{feel like
disapproving of someone/something}, \textit{want to reprimand someone},
\textit{want to tell someone off}) (see Royzman [2014] for the argument
that most instantiations of pathogen-linked disgust are normatively
suffused; see Voiklis, Cusimano, and Malle [2014] for the derivation of
the items), as well as one-item measures of \textit{sadness}
(\textit{Cry}) and \textit{happiness (Happy)}. 

\paragraph{Round/Survey 3 (Socio-Political attitudes). } To enhance
sensitivity, absolutist opposition to new technology was assessed on a
continuous scale by asking subjects to report their level of agreement
(0 = Strongly disagree and 5 = Strongly agree) with statements
advocating restrictions on genetically modified food, as well as
nuclear power, and stem cell research “no matter how great [its]
[their] benefits or minor [its] [their] risks” (Baron \& Spranca,
1997; Scott et al., 2016)\footnote{It is worth observing that, in our
  view, all three items are best understood as gauges of strong
  opinions (italicized) regarding the inherent dangers of GMF, with
  those thinking that GMFs ought to be regulated “no matter what”
  representing one end of the spectrum and those thinking otherwise
  representing the other, with the further understanding that
  expressed unconditional restrictions are likely unreflective
  generalizations that individuals might be ready to revise when
  faced with potent counterexamples (Baron \& Leshner, 2000).} (see
Aktas, Yilmaz \& Bahcekapili, in press, for one recent demonstration
that categorical and continuous measures of moral orientation,
including those of deontology/consequentialism, perform similarly in
relation to other variables of interest). Subjects also completed the
6-item \textit{Purity }and \textit{Fairness} scales from the
\textit{Moral Foundations Questionnaire} (\textit{MFQ-Purity} and
\textit{MFQ-Fairness}, respectively) (Graham, Haidt \& Nosek, 2009),
the 6-item measure of \textit{Traditionalism} (\textit{TRAD}) from the
Authoritarianism-Conservatism-Traditionalism scale (Duckitt, Bizumic,
Krauss \& Heled, 2010), and the 4-item short \textit{Social Dominance
  Orientation (SDO)} (Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth \& Malle, 1994) as
well as two separate indices of \textit{Social }(\textit{SocCon}) and
\textit{Economic} (\textit{EconCon}) \textit{Conservatism} (1 =
extremely liberal; 7 = extremely conservative) along with sex, age,
and \textit{Religiosity} (\textit{Religion}). (See Appendix B for the
exact wording of each survey.)

\section{Results }

The TDDS-P items evoked a wide range of negative reactions (see Table
1). \textit{OI }and \textit{Creeped out} were the highest rated
affective measures, with \textit{OI }ratings significantly exceeding
\textit{ED}, \textit{Disapproval}, \textit{Run away}, \textit{Cry}, and
\textit{Happy }(\textit{p}s{\textless}0.01), while being statistically
indistinguishable from \textit{Creeped out} (p=0.771). A
repeated-measures ANOVA with Bonferroni adjustment found all negatively
valenced responses to be significantly above the ratings of our control
measure \textit{Happy} (\textit{p}s{\textless}0.001).

% Table 1: 
\begin{table}[t]\centering
\caption{Descriptive statistics.}
\begin{tabular}{lc@{\hspace{5mm}}c@{\quad}c}\toprule
Measures & Range & Mean (SD) & $\alpha$\\\midrule
\mc{4}{l}{1. Low-Granularity} \\
“Disgusting”  & 1.00 – 5.57 & 3.83 (0.88) & {}-\\\midrule
\mc{4}{l}{2. High-Granularity} \\
OI & 0.38 – 4.86 & 2.60 (1.09) & 0.90\\
Creeped out  & 0.00 – 5.00 & 2.42 (1.21) & {}-\\
ED & 0.21 – 5.21 & 2.33 (1.11) & 0.82\\
Run away & 0.00 – 5.00 & 2.05 (1.14) & {}-\\
Disapprove & 0.00 – 4.24 & 1.45 (1.02) & 0.94\\
Cry & 0.00 – 4.71 & 0.96 (0.99) & {}-\\
Happy & 0.00 – 2.14 & 0.14 (0.36) & {}-\\\midrule
\mc{4}{l}{3. Moral-political}\\
AONT & 0.00 – 4.67 & 3.39 (1.14) & 0.72\\
MFQ-P & 0.17 – 4.83 & 2.23 (0.95) & 0.77\\
MFQ-F & 2.00 – 4.83 & 3.63 (0.65) & 0.66\\
SocCon & 1.00 – 6.00 & 2.33 (1.46) & {}- \\
EconCon & 1.00 – 7.00 & 3.72 (1.51) & {}- \\
TRAD & 0.50 – 4.83 & 1.84 (0.99) & 0.84\\
SDO & 1.00 – 4.50 & 1.98 (0.86) & 0.66\\\bottomrule
\mc{4}{p{2.75in}}{Note: OI = Oral Inhibition, ED = Epidermal Discomfort, AONT = Absolutist
opposition to new technology, TRAD = Traditionalism, SDO = Social
dominance orientation, SocCon = Social conservatism, EconCon = Economic
conservatism.}
\end{tabular}
\end{table}

Analyses of zero-order correlations showed that participants’ ratings of
“\textit{Disgusting}” elicited during the standard administration of
the scale were significantly and positively correlated with a variety
of negative reactions obtained during the high-granularity
administration of the scale (Table 2). 

%Table 2: 
\begin{table}[t]\centering
  \caption{Zero-order correlation
    among low- (standard administration) and high-granularity negative
    affective ratings in Rounds 1 and 2.}
\begin{tabular}{@{}lcccccc@{}}\toprule
Measures & 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 & 5 & 6\\\midrule
1. “Disgusting” & {}-  &  &  &  &  & \\
2. OI & 0.500 & {}- &  &  &  & \\
3. ED & 0.446 & 0.729 & {}- &  &  & \\
4. Creeped out & 0.449 & 0.590 & 0.685 & {}- &  & \\
5. Run away & 0.396 & 0.642 & 0.672 & 0.611 & {}- & \\
6. Disapprove & 0.359 & 0.502 & 0.600 & 0.482 & 0.568 & {}-\\
7. Cry & 0.298 & 0.638 & 0.584 & 0.537 & 0.619 & 0.490\\\midrule
\multicolumn{7}{l}{Note: All \textit{r}’s significant at
\textit{p}{\textless} 0.001;}\\
\multicolumn{7}{l}{OI = Oral Inhibition, ED = Epidermal
Discomfort.}\\
\end{tabular}
\end{table}

Follow-up contrasts of paired correlations showed that
“\textit{Disgusting}” was no more strongly correlated with \textit{OI,
}a set of responses (nausea, loss of appetite, gagging) comprising the
theoretical meaning of disgust (e.g., Nabi, 2002), than it was with
\textit{Epidermal discomfort }(Steiger’s \textit{z}=0.958,
\textit{p}=0.337), \textit{Creeped out} (\textit{z}=0.744,
\textit{p}=0.456), \textit{Disapproval} (\textit{z}=1.826,
\textit{p}=0.07), and \textit{Run away} (\textit{z}=1.592,
\textit{p}=0.111). This pattern is consistent with that evident from
our prior work (Royzman et al., 2008) and lends further support to
Kayyal et al.’s (2015) and others’ (Royzman \& Sabini, 2001)
proposition that (even in the context of pathogen-linked events)
“disgust,” “disgusting” and their cognates are often used as proxies
for \textit{general dislike}.

Replicating Scott et al.’s (2016) earlier results, “\textit{Disgusting}”
was a significant predictor of GMF (\textit{r}=0.252, \textit{p}=0.004,
95\% CI: [0.084, 0.407]) as well as a near-significant/significant
predictor of absolutist opposition to nuclear power/stem cell research
(\textit{r}=0.169, \textit{p}=0.054 and \textit{r}=0.189,
\textit{p}=0.031, respectively), two technologies with no ties to food
production.

% table 3
\begin{table}[t]\centering
  \caption{Univariate correlations
    between low- and high granularity measures, socio-moral traits,
    and attitudes towards GMF and New Technologies (AONT).}
\begin{tabular}{ld{3.3}d{3.3}}\toprule
 & \mc{1}{c}{GMF} & \mc{1}{c}{AONT}\\\midrule
\mc{3}{l}{\bf Low-granularity} \\
``Disgusting'' & 0.25^{**} & 0.25^{**}\\\midrule
\mc{3}{l}{\bf High-granularity}\\
Oral Inhibition (OI) & 0.03 & -0.01\\
Creeped out & 0.25^{**} & 0.23^*\\
Epidermal discomfort (ED) & 0.18^* & 0.15\\
Disapproval & -0.04 & 0.01\\
Run away  & 0.001 & 0.004\\
Cry & 0.05 & 0.05\\\midrule
\mc{3}{l}{\bf Socio-moral traits}\\
Economic Conservatism & 0.00 & 0.11\\
Social Conservatism & 0.08 & 0.24^{**}\\
Traditionalism & 0.29^{**} & 0.39^{**}\\
Social Dominance Orientation & -0.18^* & -0.17^*\\
MFQ-Fairness & 0.21^* & 0.23^*\\
MFQ-Purity & 0.35^{**} & 0.46^{**}\\\bottomrule
\multicolumn{3}{l}{Notes: $^*$ p {\textless}= 0.05,
$^{**}$ p {\textless} 0.01}.\\
\end{tabular}
\end{table}

However, while opposition to \textit{GMF} was significantly correlated
with \textit{Creeped out} (\textit{r}=0.249, \textit{p}=0.004, 95\%
CI: [0.081, 0.404]), \textit{it was largely unrelated to OI}
(\textit{r}=0.026, \textit{p}=0.773, 95\% CI: [--0.147, 0.197]),
\textit{a set of responses (nausea, loss of appetite, gagging)
  comprising the theoretical meaning of disgust.} Correlations between
\textit{OI} and opposition to nuclear power/stem research were equally
low (\textit{r}s = -0.048 and -0.004, respectively). Indeed,
\textit{OI} did not significantly correlate with any socio-moral
attitude, including the allegedly disgust-based (Haidt, Koller \&
Dias, 1993; Haidt, 2012) considerations of moral purity (MFQ-P) and
social traditionalism (TRAD).

Since ratings of opposition to \textit{GMF}, \textit{nuclear energy},
and \textit{stem cell research }were highly inter-correlated
($\alpha$=0.72), all loading on a single factor\footnote{ The
  Principal Component Analysis indicated that the single-factor
  solution (Eigenvalue=1.932, factor loadings between 0.763 and 0.870)
  was notably preferable to the alternatives (Eigenvalues=0.668 and
  0.399).}, we averaged them (range: 0-4.67, Mean [SD] = 3.39 [1.14]),
to form an “absolutist opposition to new technologies” (\textit{AONT})
measure, then calculated zero-order correlations between
“\textit{Disgusting”}/\textit{OI} and \textit{AONT}. As with
individual items, “\textit{Disgusting”} was a significant correlate of
\textit{AONT} (\textit{r}=0.254, \textit{p}=0.004), while \textit{OI}
did not correlate with it at all (\textit{r}=--0.01, \textit{p}=0.898)
(see Table 3).\footnote{ In order to better mirror Scott et al
  (2016)’s analyses in Table 1 (Scott et al., 2016, p.\ 321), we
  regressed \textit{AONT} and \textit{GMF} on the high-granularity and
  socio-political items. The results are presented in Appendix D
  (Table 4). \textit{Creeped out }was a unique predictor of
  \textit{AONT }(\textit{b} = 0.271, \textit{t = }2.677, \textit{p} =
  .009) and GMF (\textit{b} = 0.370, \textit{t = }2.803, \textit{p} =
  .006), with other affective and socio-political items taken into
  account (see \url{http://journal.sjdm.org/stat.htm} for important
  caveats for interpreting results of a multi-variate analysis).}

Given the previously established association between feeling “creeped
out” and the perception of a potential threat to one’s safety (see
McAndrew \& Koehnke, 2016; see also Appendix A), our results lend
support to Gray and Schein’s (2016) thesis that harm is important to
moralizing human conduct in general and certain types of technological
developments in particular (see also Royzman et al., 2009) (but see
Inbar, Scott \& Rozin, 2016 for a response to Gray and Schein’s [2016]
conceptual and statistical critique).

\section{Discussion}

We draw five main conclusions. First, our data indicate that Scott et
al.’s (2016) original result—traditionally assessed trait disgust is a
modest yet significant predictor of absolutist opposition to
genetically modified food — is quite robust. The finding replicated with
a newer, psychometrically improved measure of DS, a different subject
population, and various accommodations to mitigate reactivity concerns.
The finding also extends to at least two other types of new
technologies: nuclear power and stem cell research. 

Relatedly, we find that, at least within our multi-national sample of
college undergraduates, absolutist opposition to GMF is part of a more
wide-ranging pattern of opposition toward new technology in general,
with those favoring absolutist restrictions on GMF tending to favor
absolutist restrictions on other technologies as well.

Third, consistent with Nabi’s (2002) and others’ proposition that
“disgust”, “disgusting” and their cognates are commonly used as
stand-ins or proxies for \textit{general dislike}, we find that, even
in the context of ostensibly pure “pathogen-linked events”,
“disgusting” is as likely to refer to fear, disapproval, and epidermal
discomfort as it is to refer to oral inhibition proper, highlighting
the overarching concern with polysemy of affective terms, i.e., that
the meaning of the terms may vary considerably depending on the
context and linguistic community (researchers vs. lay public) involved
(Royzman, McCauley \& Rozin, 2005; see also Nabi, 2002; Kayyal et al.,
2015).

Fourth, we showed that the precise operationalization of disgust has a
strong impact on findings related to GMF. Once operationalized in a
semantically precise way (one that does justice to disgust’s unique
standing as “a guardian of the mouth” [Olatunji \& Sawchuk 2005, p.\ 935]
and a category of food rejection [Angyal, 1941; Darwin, 1872/1965;
Nabi, 2002; Olatunji \& Sawchuk 2005; Royzman \& Sabini, 2001; Royzman
et al., 2008; Rozin and Fallon, 1987; Yoder et al., 2016]),
susceptibility to \textit{feeling disgusted }(\textit{i.e., orally
inhibited}) did little to predict absolutist opposition to GMF and
other new tech. This negative result is the very opposite of a
conclusion one would have reached had one relied solely on traditional
means of disgust assessment, i.e., asking people about the degree to
which they find a set of putative pathogen-linked events “disgusting”. 

Instead, consistent with prior work on fear and GMF (Laros \& Steenkamp,
2004; Rzymski \& Królczyk, 2016; Ventura et al., 2016),
we find that the internally cohesive pattern of absolutist opposition
to the new technologies sampled in this study was best predicted by the
shared affective sensitivity to being unnerved or “creeped out” in the
face of uncertain or ill-defined threats. This result gains further
support from the three convergent sources of evidence outlined in the
earlier sections of the paper — (a) classic body of work in the
psychology of risk perception showing that fear is “the major
determiner of public perception and acceptance of risk for a wide range
of hazards” related to new technology (Slovic \& Peters, 2006, p.\ 322;
see also Fischhoff et al., 1978; Sjöberg, 2000, Slovic \& Peters,
2006; van der Pligt et al., 1986), (b) Kahan’s (2016) convergent
demonstration of a positive association between worries over GMF and
higher sensitivity to a variety of risks, (c) our finding that our
subjects’ propensity to rate the TDDS-P items as “disgusting” was as
high a predictor of their absolutist opposition to nuclear power, a
technology with strong ties to fear and no apparent ties to food
production, as it was of their absolutist opposition to GMF.

The negative findings that we report. i.e., the lack of any
discernable association between granularly measured trait disgust and
moral opposition to GMF, are particularly hard to dismiss and fit well
with other recent lines of research (see Royzman et al., 2009;
Royzman, Goodwin \& Leeman, 2011; Royzman, Atanasov, Landy, Parks \&
Gepty, 2014; Royzman et al., 2015 for related results). This includes
a major meta-analysis by Landy and Goodwin (2015). In reviewing over
fifty studies, published and otherwise, Landy and Goodwin (2015)
determined that the effect of incidental (experimentally induced)
disgust on moral judgment was weak at best (d = .11) and disappeared
entirely when publication bias was taken into account. (For a recent
replication, see Johnson et al.\ [2016], who showed that the null
results remain in effect with or without hypothesized moderators
factored in.) Most pertinently, Landy and Goodwin (2015) found that
the effect of induced disgust was “\textit{essentially nonexistent}
for imagined or mental inductions” (p.\ 530, emphasis added) (i.e.,
the type of “inductions” one would experience while thinking of, or
dwelling on, GMF), with all effects being essentially near zero or
negative \textit{and} near zero (on this point, see also Baron,
Royzman and Goodwin, 2013, and Gray and Schein, 2016). These findings
are important for Scott et al.\ (2016) whose stated goals include
exploring disgust “as a cause” of “moral opposition” to genetically
modified food (p.\ 317)\footnote{According to Scott et al.\ (2016),
  one of the paper’s key concerns was: “What role does disgust play —
  as a cause and/or consequence — in moral opposition to GM?” Given
  the implausibility of a claim that overall higher DS could emerge as
  a consequence of one’s moral opposition toward GMF, it is reasonably
  clear that Scott et al.\ are casting trait disgust as a cause.}
(described as a “disgust-based” prohibition [p.\ 316, p.\ 319, p.\
322]) and who argue that that their data “underscore \textit{the power
  of affect to} \textit{shape} beliefs about the acceptability of new
technologies” (p.\ 320, emphasis added). The “shaping” would have
presumably occurred as those with higher trait scores felt more
disgusted while thinking of/dwelling on GMF, becoming more opposed in
the end. But Landy and Goodwin’s (2015) work makes this unlikely: the
mechanism required is not there.\footnote{An alternate account would
  suggest that those with high trait scores may gravitate toward some
  form of political engagement where anti-GMF beliefs are widely
  shared. One’s views would then be “shaped” by these groups. However,
  Scott et al.’s (2016) own data seem to rule this out by finding no
  association between politics and attitudes toward GMF (our data bear
  this out just as well).}

As the forgoing analysis illustrates, establishing a link between
putative feelings of disgust and moral phenomena of interest is no easy
matter and requires careful methodological consideration. The key
requirement for all future work in this area will be to assess disgust
(and other affective variables) in a highly granular manner. Moreover,
because negative feelings do co-occur and because having disgust (even
if granularly assessed) as the only response option may cause one to
use it as a stand-in for other forms of negative affect, a revised
disgust scale must feature a menu of non-disgust options including ED
and normative disapproval, with all the options being tethered to a
common set of items (e.g., stepping in a dog poop) rated on a common
scale. The strength of a disgust-morality link could then be properly
ascertained by examining the extent to which high-granularity ratings
of DS uniquely relate to a moral variable of interest as the two
measures are administered days or weeks apart (see above for the
rationale) while taking other affective variables into account. 

These methodological recommendations are complementary to those
adduced in our previous research that demonstrated just how little
“moral disgust” is in evidence when using “purity”-based vignettes
that neither contain nor (and this is a key requirement) \textit{call
  to mind} pathogen-linked content, such as the thoughts of death,
disablement, and disease (Gray \& Schein, 2016]) likely to be
engendered by GMF in those opposed to GMF (Royzman et al., 2014; see
also Yoder et al., 2016).

Lastly, our data offer a viable resolution to a thorny and practically
consequential debate regarding the role of \textit{feeling} vs.\
\textit{harm} in the etiology of people’s resistance to GMF (Scott et
al., 2016; Gray \& Schein, 2016). As adumbrated above, the two
perspectives are relatively easy to reconcile once we grant that the
feeling in question is not disgust but the affective output of a
harm-vigilance mechanism designed to protect our evolutionary
ancestors from costly false negatives (e.g., “seeing” a bear as shrub)
by having them err on the side of caution instead.

One possible criticism of our work is that the lay meaning of “creeped
out” requires some further analysis and elucidation. We agree. However,
as demonstrated in Appendix A, we were cognizant of this concern and
carried out a supplementary study to address it in advance (employing a
set of subjects drawn from our main sample). These subjects tended to
predominantly associate “feeling creeped out” with “nervousness/unease”
regarding a \textit{potential} threat, but \textit{not }with certain
danger or disgust (“feeling sickened/grossed out”) / perceived risk of
contamination, thus clearly conceptualizing “creeped out” as a special
member of the fear family. The same conclusion was reached by McAndrew
and Koehnke (2016) based on a large international sample of 1341
individuals responding to an online survey. Indeed, we would argue that
at this juncture the discriminant validity of “creeped out” as a
measure of a fear-like state is far better established than the
discriminant validity of “disgust”/”disgusting” as a measure of the
theoretical meaning of disgust as a “food rejection” response (Olatunji
\& Sawchuk, 2005, p.\ 935; see also Nabi, 2002 and above). 

Another criticism of our approach would be that the measure of trait
disgust (TDDS-P) that we employed (along with Kahan [2016] and Landy
and Piazza [2016]) was substantially shorter and narrower than DS-R,
with the relative “narrowness” of TDDS-P being largely due to its
exclusion of the “reminders of animal origins” vignettes. The
criticism is factually correct, but, as noted above, we see the
absence of these items as a benefit rather than a drawback. Not only
the “animal reminder” items (e.g., a person walking through a
cemetery, a person is spending a night in a hotel room where someone
recently passed away) have been argued to be more closely linked to
fear than disgust (thus, further confounding any clear assessment of
disgust vs.\ fear; see Tybur et al., 2016), but the entire rationale
for their inclusion — an untested hypothesis that “anything that
reminds us that we are animals elicits disgust” (Rozin et al., 2008,
p.\ 761) — has recently been tested and disconfirmed. Following a line
of thought that humans can compare themselves to animals in a number
of favorable ways without feeling disgusted (Royzman \& Sabini, 2001;
Tybur et al., 2009), Kollareth and Russell (2016) conducted six
studies that closely examined and found no support for the “animal
reminder” hypothesis.\footnote{ Using respondents from both North
  America and India, the six studies revealed that, though the
  pleasant “animal reminder” stimuli reminded subjects of their animal
  origins even more strongly than the unpleasant counterparts, they
  were not disgusting; nor there was any significant association
  between disgust and being reminded of one’s animal origins via the
  unpleasant “animal reminder” stimuli; and no disgust was elicited by
  directly calling subjects’ attention to their animal pedigrees
  (Kollareth \& Russell, 2016).} In our view, the sum total of these
considerations makes any further use of trait disgust scales that
include “animal reminder” items both theoretically unjustified and
(due to these items’ high potency as fear/creepiness-elicitors)
psychometrically ill-advised. We must also reiterate that, from the
purely practical point of view, the 25-item DS-R utilized by Scott et
al. (2016) would have been unwieldy due to its sheer length (crossing
25 DS-R items with 12 high-granularity ratings see above would have
resulted in a total of 300 separate questions for the high-granularity
condition of the study).

One further criticism of our results is that all our data were based on an
undergraduate student sample that is not nearly as large or
demographically diverse as its representative counterpart utilized by
Scott et al.\ (2016). We agree with the general thrust of this
criticism, but would argue that several important caveats are in
order.  First, as noted above, our study has closely replicated Scott
et al.’s (2016) finding of a significant yet modest positive
association between DS and absolutist opposition to GMF. Second, as
previously discussed, our findings substantially converge with those
recently reported by Kahan (2016), who did use a large, representative
U.S. sample (\textit{N} ${\approx}$1200). Third, several key
demographic factors thought to be insufficiently varied in
undergraduate student samples relative to their more representative
counterparts, such as students’ lower conservatism and religiosity,
along with higher education and family income, apparently played
little role in people’s opposition to GMF. According to Scott et al.’s
(2016) own findings from a multiple regression model (Table 1, p.\
321) (N = 680), the reported relationship between disgust and favoring
restrictions on the use and development of GMFs held even with
conservatism, education, religiosity, ethnicity, income, and education
included in the model.  According to the model, none of the
aforementioned variables (conservatism, education, religiosity,
ethnicity, income, and education) had a substantial relationship to
favoring restrictions on GMF. Fourth, though our sample was clearly
less representative than Scott et al.’s (2016) of the U.S. population
as a whole, it was far more representative of the world (a matter of
great consequence given that opposition to GMF is global issue, with
some of the most extreme anti-GMF positions being held by people and
polities outside the U.S.  [Bain \& Dandachi, 2014]) — more than 40
percent of our subjects were raised in or had their primary residence
outside the U.S. Scott et al.’s (2016) sample was limited to the
U.S. paid on-line survey takers by design. Finally, one considerable
advantage of using a younger, undergraduate cohort is indicated by the
composition of McAndrew and Koehnke’s (2016) sample (mean age = 29,
with the unstated median being, most likely, considerably
lower). Since slang terms often change across time, using individuals
of the same generation as McAndrew and Koehnke’s subjects has likely
contributed to stabilizing the primary meaning of “creeped out” among
our subjects in a way that matched the intended meaning derived from
McAndrew and Koehnke’s (2016) report.  (Indeed, McAndrew and Koehnke's
data suggest that the association between “creeps”, “creepiness”,
“creeped out” and a sense of threat was far more pronounced among
their younger subjects than among their older cohort).

Resolving the debate between fear and disgust has important policy
implications.  While some work shows that communicating the benefits
of GMFs and other technologies can improve public acceptance of
GMFs(Costa-Font, Gil \& Traill, 2008), scientists and policy makers
need to continue pursuing new methods of persuading the general public
to support these new technologies. Our results suggest that one
successful strategy may be to demystify the scientific processes
underlying genetic engineering. This information would not communicate
relative harms and benefits per se --- which has been the dominant
strategy taken so far --- but would rather increase the public's
awareness of the process and thus (hopefully) reduce the degree to
which GMFs are conceptualized as odd, mysterious, and strange, making
them into a less “unknown”(and, hopefully, far less “creepy”)
quantity. \footnote{One important objective within this approach would
  be to make participants aware that GMF is just ``breeding'' done
  faster (and more selectively) for the traits of interest, calling
  their attention to the fact that almost all the fruits and
  vegetables (and some animals) that we eat are not ``natural'' in
  this sense, but were bred over centuries with a specific purpose in
  mind.} Lending credence to the potential efficacy of this approach,
a recent national Pew survey found that those with more knowledge of
science were more likely to see GMOs as safe to eat (Funk \& Rainie,
2015).

All in all, the results presented herein, while hardly definitive, are
very much in line with prior theorizing and research (e.g., Cameron et
al., 2015; Kahan, 2016; Kayyal et al., 2015; Landy \& Goodwin, 2015;
Landy \& Piazza, 2016; Nabi, 2002; Royzman \& Sabini, 2001; Royzman et
al., 2008) and warrant the field’s attention. If heeded, they stand to
improve the current research practices both conceptually and
methodologically, yielding more accurate policy prescriptions down the
line.

\vspace{-2ex}

\section*{References}
\begin{hangparas}{1em}{1}

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Aktas, B., Yilmaz, O., \& Bahçekapili, H. G. (2017). Moral pluralism on
the trolley tracks: Different normative principles are used for
different reasons in justifying moral judgments. \textit{Judgment and Decision
Making, 12}, 297--307. 

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%\vfill
%\break
\end{hangparas}

\bigskip
\section*{Appendix}

\subsection*{A. Supplementary survey (“creeped out” meaning check)}

To confirm that our understanding of “creeped out” (derived from the
analyses of McAndrew and Koehnke, 2016) was in line with participants’
own conception of the term, a randomly selected subset of students (n =
42) were asked to consider an additional set of questions one week
following the completion of Survey 3. Two questions were presented in a
fixed random order with response options partially counterbalanced for
order. 

The first question read: “Please indicate (using a checkmark) which of
the following BEST describes or comes CLOSEST to what you are usually
feeling when you speak of someone or something \textbf{creeping you
out}.” The response options included (in partially counterbalanced
order): “\textit{Feeling nervous/uneasy”, “Feeling angry/pissed off”,
“Feeling happy/excited”, “Feeling sickened/grossed out.” }

The second question read: “Please indicate which of the following comes
CLOSEST to expressing your state of mind when you are feeling or being
genuinely \textbf{creeped out}.”The response options included (in
partially counterbalanced order): “\textit{It feels very safe, cozy,
and secure,”“It feels like there is a possible threat from some strange
and unpredictable source,” “It feels like I am being treated unfairly,”
“It feels like I just lost something of value,” “It feels like I am
being contaminated,” “It feels like I am in some clear and immediate
danger.”}(The subjects were verbally instructed that if they thought
that two or more response options were equally appropriate in a given
case they were welcome to check all that applied).

In line with McAndrew and Koehnke’s (2016) results, the majority of
subjects selected “\textit{Feeling nervous/uneasy}” (35 out 42 or 83.3
percent) for question 1 and “\textit{It feels like there is a possible
threat}” (34 out of 42 or 81 percent) for question 2. In either case,
the relative frequency of the dominant response choice was
significantly greater (p {\textless} 0.001 in either case by
Chi-squared test as recommended by Campbell[2007]) than that of the
next most common response choice—the “\textit{Feeling sickened/grossed
out}” option (7 out of 42 or 16.7\%) for question 1 and the “\textit{It
feels like I am being contaminated} “option (9 out of 42 or 21.4\%) for
question 2, respectively.

During the following group discussion, subjects indicated that the
possible threat most closely linked to “creeped out” was that of a
physical (including sexual) assault. 

\subsection*{B. Additional survey text and administration details.}

\textbf{General data collection.} Surveys were administered over the web
using Qualtrics. Participants were notified via email when the survey
was launched and were invited to complete the survey on their own
before it closed one week later. 

\subsubsection*{TDDS-P: Standard (low granularity) administration. }

All seven scenarios were presented in a fixed order

\paragraph{Instructions.}

Please rate how disgusting you find the concepts described in the items
(e.g. \textbf{Stepping on dog poop}), where \textbf{0} means that you
did not find the concept disgusting at all and \textbf{6} means that
you found the concept disgusting to an extreme degree.

\_\_\_ Accidentally touching a person’s bloody cut.

\_\_\_ Seeing a cockroach run across the floor.

\_\_\_ Seeing some mold on old leftovers in your refrigerator.

\_\_\_ Shaking hands with a stranger who has sweaty palms.

\_\_\_ Sitting next to someone who has red sores on their arm.

\_\_\_ Standing close to a person who has body odor.

\_\_\_ Stepping on dog poop.

\subsubsection*{TDDS-P: High-granularity administration.}

\paragraph{Presentation and counter-balancing.}

Each of the seven scenarios (see above) was presented on a separate
page, with the concept/behavior at the top (e.g. “Stepping in dog
poop”) and the 12 high-granularity measures below (e.g. “Stepping in
dog poop makes me \textit{feel creeped out}.”). As in the case of the
low-granularity administration, the scales ranged from 0 (not at all)
to 6 (extremely).

The seven scenarios were individually randomized for each participant.
To determine the order of the 12 high-granularity measures for each
scenario, we constructed 10 lists each with a different fixed order
which remained the same across each of the seven scenarios for that
participant. We constructed the first five by randomizing the order of
the high-granularity questions, and created five additional orders by
reversing each one of those. Participants were randomly assigned to one
of these 10 orders when they filled out the survey. 

\paragraph{Instructions.}

The following items describe a variety of concepts.

Please rate the extent to which each concept (e.g. \textbf{Stepping on
dog poop}) makes you feel certain sensations and desires (e.g., feeling
creeped out, feeling physically nauseated, wanting to run away, wanting
to tell someone off) where \textbf{0} means that you did not experience
a given sensation/desire at all and \textbf{6 }means that you
experienced it to an extreme degree.

You will do this for seven different concepts. 

\pagebreak

\paragraph{High-granularity rating scales}\rule{0mm}{1mm}

\medskip
\noindent
\textit{Oral inhibition (OI):}

\medskip
\noindent
[Stepping on dog poop] makes me feel physically nauseated

\noindent
[\dots] makes me gag

\noindent
[\dots] makes me lose my appetite 

\medskip
\noindent
\textit{Disapprove:}

\noindent
[\dots] makes me want to tell someone off

\noindent
[\dots] makes me want to disapprove of someone

\noindent
[\dots] makes me want to reprimand someone

\medskip
\noindent
\textit{Epidermal discomfort (ED}):

\noindent
[\dots] makes me feel a crawling sensation on my skin

\noindent
[\dots] makes me want to shake something off me

 
\medskip
\noindent
\textit{Creeped out:} 

\noindent
[\dots] makes me feel creeped out

\medskip
\noindent
\textit{Run away:} 

\noindent
[\dots] makes me want to run away

\medskip
\noindent
\textit{Other}:

\noindent
[\dots] makes me feel like crying 

\noindent
[\dots] makes me feel happy

\subsubsection*{Survey 3}

\paragraph{Presentation and counterbalancing.}

In addition to the New Technology items, participants were asked to
complete 6-item Purity and Fairness scales from the Moral Foundations
Questionnaire (MFQ), the 6-item short form of the Traditionalism facet
of the Authoritarianism-Conservatism-Traditionalism scale (ACT-T), as
well as the 4-item short Social Dominance Orientation scale (SDO). The
order of all measures was randomly determined for each participant. See
below for the full reference, text and response scale for each item. 

Lastly, participants filled out a short demographic form asking for
their Social and Economic political identity, Age, Sex, and
Religiosity. 

\subsubsection*{Moral Foundations Questionnaire (Graham, Haidt \& Nosek, 2009)}

When you decide whether something is right or wrong, to what extent are
the following considerations relevant to your thinking? Please rate
each statement using this scale:

[0] = not at all relevant (This consideration has nothing to do with my
judgments of right and wrong)

[1] = not very relevant

[2] = slightly relevant

[3] = somewhat relevant

[4] = very relevant

[5] = extremely relevant (This is one of the most important factors when
I judge right and wrong)

\_\_\_ Whether or not some people were treated differently than
others 

\_\_\_ Whether or not someone violated standards of purity and
decency 

\_\_\_ Whether or not someone acted unfairly 

\_\_\_ Whether or not someone did something disgusting 

\_\_\_ Whether or not someone was denied his or her rights 

\_\_\_ Whether or not someone acted in a way that God would approve
of

\medskip
\noindent
Please read the following sentences and indicate your agreement or
disagreement:

[0] = Strongly disagree

[1] = Moderately disagree

[2] = Slightly disagree

[3] = Slightly agree

[4] = Moderately agree

[5] = Strongly agree

\_\_\_ When the government makes laws, the number one principle
should be ensuring that everyone is treated fairly. 

\_\_\_ People should not do things that are disgusting, even if no
one is harmed. 

\_\_\_ Justice is the most important requirement for a society. 

\_\_\_ I would call some acts wrong on the grounds that they are
unnatural. 

\_\_\_ I think it’s morally wrong that rich children inherit a lot
of money while poor children inherit nothing. 

\_\_\_ Chastity is an important and valuable virtue.

\subsubsection*{New technologies (based on Baron \& Spranca, 1997)}

Please read the following sentences and indicate your agreement or
disagreement:

[0] = Strongly disagree

[1] = Moderately disagree

[2] = Slightly disagree

[3] = Slightly agree

[4] = Moderately agree

[5] = Strongly agree

There should be restrictions on the use of embryonic stem cells no
matter how great their benefits and how minor their risks.

There should be restrictions on the use of genetically modified foods
(e.g., genetically modified salmon) no matter how great their benefits
and how minor their risks.

There should be restrictions on commercial use of nuclear power (e.g.,
nuclear power plants) no matter how great its benefits or how minor its
risks.

\subsubsection*{Social Dominance Orientation (Pratto et al., 1994)}

There are many types of groups in the world: men and women, ethnic and
religious groups, nationalities, political factions, etc. Please rate
the degree to which you oppose or favor each statement about groups,
where higher numbers mean you favor the statement more, and lower
numbers mean you oppose the statement more.

[1--7 scale from [1] = ``Extremely oppose'' to [7] = ``Extremely favor''.]

In setting priorities, we must consider all groups. [R]

We should \textit{not} push for group equality.

Group equality should be our ideal [R]

Superior groups should dominate inferior groups.

\subsubsection*{Traditionalism (Duckitt et al., 2010)}

The following questions concern ideas that people may or may not hold.
Please indicate the degree to which you disagree or agree with each
statement, where higher numbers mean you agree with the statement more
and lower numbers mean you disagree with the statement more.

[0] = Strongly disagree

[1] = Moderately disagree

[2] = Slightly disagree

[3] = Slightly agree

[4] = Moderately agree

[5] = Strongly agree

The ``old fashioned ways'' and ``old fashioned values'' still show the
best way to live.

God’s laws about abortion, pornography, and marriage must be strictly
followed before it is too late.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with nudist camps.

This country will flourish if young people stop experimenting with
drugs, alcohol, and sex, and pay more attention to family values.

There is nothing wrong with premarital sexual intercourse.

Nobody should stick to the ``straight and narrow.'' Instead, people
should break loose and try lots of different ideas and experiences.

\subsubsection*{Ideological orientation}

In general, how liberal or conservative would you say you are on
\textbf{economic issues}?

[1] = Very liberal

[2] = Liberal

[3] = Slightly liberal

[4] = Middle-of-the-road

[5] = Slightly conservative

[6] = Conservative

[7] = Very Conservative

In general, how liberal or conservative would you say you are on
\textbf{social issues}?

[same scale]

\newpage

\subsection*{C. Additional demographic information about the sample and hypothesis
manipulation check}

Three weeks after administering Survey 3, we contacted study
participants to gather additional demographic information, including
their ethnic identity, religious identity, and country of origin (see
below). We also asked participants to guess the purpose of the
experiment. Out of 113 students who completed the survey, only three
correctly inferred that our interests lay at the intersection of
morality and emotion, with all three speculating that the affective
variable of interest was disgust, and that the socio-moral variable
under consideration was “moral judgment,” perception of social norms,
or political orientation, respectively.\footnote{All remaining subjects
viewed the study as an exploration of disgust as such. No participant
ventured a guess that the project was about (or made any reference to)
new technology in general or GMF in particular or posited any
connection between feeling creeped out and either of the above.}


\textbf{Country of Origin. }The sample included a large number of
international students, with 39.5\% of the group claiming “a country of
origin” other than the US (contact authors for further details).
Collectively, they represented a total of 29 countries, including
Brazil, Canada, China, Columbia, France, India, Israel, Malaysia,
Mexico, Myanmar, Paraguay, Russia, South Korea, Spain, and UK, among
others. 

\textbf{Ethnicity. }The five most commonly reported ethnicities were
While/Caucasian (39.5 percent), East-Asian or East-Asian-American (20.1
percent), Latin/Hispanic (16.8 percent), African or African-American
(8.4 percent), and South-Asian or South-Asian-American (5.9 percent).

\onecolumn

\subsection*{D. Multivariate analyses} 

%table 4
\begin{table}[h]\centering
  \caption{Least-squares regression model
    estimating the relationship between high-granularity measures of
    negative affect/socio-moral variables and absolutist opposition to new
    technologies (AONT) and genetically modified foods (GMF).}
\begin{tabular}{l*{4}{d{2.6}}@{\qquad}*{4}{d{2.6}}}\toprule
& \mc{4}{c}{AONT model} & \mc{4}{c}{GMF model}\\\cmidrule(r{8mm}){2-5}\cmidrule{6-9}
IV & \mc{1}{c}{b} & \mc{1}{c}{(SE)} & \mc{1}{c}{t} & \mc{1}{c}{p { ~ ~ }} & \mc{1}{c}{b} & \mc{1}{c}{(SE)} & \mc{1}{c}{t} &  \mc{1}{c}{p}\\\midrule
Intercept  & -7.976 & (3.760) & -2.121 & 0.036 & -10.71 & (4.896) & -2.187 & 0.031\\
Creeped out & 0.271 & (0.101) & 2.677 & 0.009^{**} & 0.370 & (0.132) & 2.803 & 0.006^{**}\\
OI & -0.193 & (0.128) & -1.503 & 0.136 & -0.251 & (0.167) & -1.502 & 0.136\\
Disapproval & -0.034 & (0.122) & -0.281 & 0.779 & -0.200 & (0.159) & -1.258 & 0.211\\
ED & 0.061 & (0.146) & 0.420 & 0.675 & 0.263 & (0.190) & 1.386 & 0.169\\
Run away & -0.188 & (0.121) & -1.555 & 0.123 & -0.263 & (0.157) & -1.672 & 0.097\\
Cry & -0.003 & (0.127) & -0.021 & 0.983 & 0.014 & (0.165) & 0.082 & 0.935\\
MFQ-P & 0.343 & (0.128) & 2.689 & 0.008^{**} & 0.347 & (0.166) & 2.087 & 0.039^*\\
MFQ-F & 0.243 & (0.160) & 1.524 & 0.130 & 0.134 & (0.208) & 0.645 & 0.520\\
SocCon & 0.040 & (0.081) & 0.495 & 0.622 & -0.100 & (0.105) & -0.953 & 0.343\\
EconCon & 0.049 & (0.069) & 0.719 & 0.474 & 0.031 & (0.090) & 0.346 & 0.730\\
Religious & 0.045 & (0.062) & 0.730 & 0.467 & 0.078 & (0.081) & 0.965 & 0.337\\
Sex & 0.381 & (0.196) & 1.947 & 0.054 & 0.398 & (0.255) & 1.561 & 0.121\\
Age (Log) & 5.945 & (2.715) & 2.190 & 0.031* & 8.398 & (3.536) & 2.375 & 0.019^*\\
TRAD & 0.139 & (0.140) & 0.994 & 0.322 & 0.144 & (0.182) & 0.790 & 0.431\\
SDO & -0.130 & (0.120) & -1.080 & 0.282 & -0.149 & (0.157) & -0.949 & 0.345\\\cmidrule(r{8mm}){2-5}\cmidrule{6-9}
 & \mc{4}{c}{\textit{R}\textit{\textsuperscript{2}} = 0.406,
 Adjusted-\textit{R}\textit{\textsuperscript{2}} = 0.327} &
\mc{4}{c}{\textit{R}\textit{\textsuperscript{2}} = 0.339,
 Adjusted-\textit{R}\textit{\textsuperscript{2}} = 0.251}\\\bottomrule
\mc{9}{l}{Notes: $^*$ p {\textless}= 0.05, $^{**}$ p {\textless} 0.01}\\
\mc{9}{p{6in}}{Labels: OI = Oral Inhibition, ED = Epidermal Discomfort, SocCon = Social
conservatism, EconCon = Economic conservatism, TRAD = Traditionalism,
SDO = Social dominance orientation, MFQ-F = Moral Foundations
Questionnaire Fairness subscale, MFQ-P = Moral Foundations Questionnaire
Purity subscale.}\\
\end{tabular}
\end{table}
% Please contact authors for any additional details.
\end{document}
