"They're Eating Our Pets!": When Disgust and Perceived Cruelty Combine to Heighten Prejudice.

This article focuses on research examining how moralized disgust and purity-related emotions contribute to prejudice against cultural outgroups, particularly when these groups are portrayed as consuming certain types of meat. The study, involving 2,710 U.S. participants, found that hostility and punitive intent were strongest toward outgroups associated with eating animals that evoke high moral concern (dog, monkey), moderate for animals linked to contamination disgust (rat), and lowest for neutral animals (cow). The findings suggest that visceral disgust is more consistently related to bias than compassion, indicating that invoking disgust and perceived cruelty can intensify hostility toward cultural outgroups. This research is based on a preprint that has not yet undergone peer review. [Extracted from the article]