"But this mental heuristic is known to glitch in other ways. Racism and xenophobia, for example, also recruit pathogen-detection brain mechanisms. The language and metaphors we routinely use to justify moral outrage and our fear of the other also employ pathogen metaphors ... Studies have shown that germaphobes and people who score higher in disgust sensitivity tend to be more ideologically and politically rigid"
- #SamuelPaulVeissière
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/culture-mind-and-brain/202002/the-coronavirus-is-much-worse-you-think
@strypey @kravietz As an anthropologist I have big problems with this article. There are several unsupported generalisations (Western cultures? as a coherent class? and they are "looser"? That was comprehensively rejected by folks who actually study culture back in the 1960's!) and mistaken inferences (social structures-->urbanisation-->diseases is a more plausible causal explanation for the correlation he notes).
