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Infection Breeds Reticence: The Effects of Disease Salience on Self-Perceptions of Personality and Behavioral Avoidance Tendencies
Abstract
Social living brings humans great rewards, but also associated dangers, such as increased risk of infection from others. Although the body's immune system is integral to combating disease, it is physiologically costly. Less costly are evolved mechanisms for promoting avoidance of people who are potentially infectious, such as perceiving oneself as less social and increasing the tendency to make avoidant movements. In Experiment 1, exposure to a disease prime led participants to rate themselves as less extraverted than did exposure to a control prime, and led participants high in perceived vulnerability to disease (PVD) to rate themselves as less agreeable and less open to experience than did exposure to a control prime. In Experiment 2, a disease prime facilitated avoidant tendencies in arm movements when participants viewed photographs of faces, especially for participants high in PVD. Together, these findings reveal functional changes in perception and behavior that would serve to promote avoidance of potentially infectious individuals.
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“These researchers also found that subjects with high scores on perceived vulnerability to disease showed greater feelings of interpersonal avoidance than did subjects with low scores on the same scale.”
From Parasite-stress promotes in-group assortative sociality: The cases of strong family ties and heightened religiosity (2012) · cites this paper as Mortensen et al. 2010
In the citing paper
“Mortensen et al. (2010) reports that subjects viewing slides with disease-salient cues immediately exhibited greater feelings promoting between-person avoidance (reduced extraversion and openness to experiences) in comparison to these subjects' feelings upon viewing control slides.”
From Parasite-stress promotes in-group assortative sociality: The cases of strong family ties and heightened religiosity (2012) · cites this paper as Mortensen et al. 2010
In the citing paper
“viewing parasitesalient slides resulted in increased avoidant arm movements when subjects viewed facial photos of strangers, especially for subjects high in perceived vulnerability to disease.”
From Parasite-stress promotes in-group assortative sociality: The cases of strong family ties and heightened religiosity (2012) · cites this paper as Mortensen et al. 2010
In the citing paper
“F&T address this limitation of correlational studies by noting experimental research in which viewing cues to disease salience affected behavior in ways predicted by their parasite-stress theory of social behavior, whereas viewing control images did not (e.g., Mortensen et al. 2010).”
From Parasite-stress promotes in-group assortative sociality: The cases of strong family ties and heightened religiosity (2012) · cites this paper as Mortensen et al. 2010
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Self-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- Mortensen, C. R., Becker, D. V., Ackerman, J. M., Neuberg, S. L., & Kenrick, D. T.
- Affiliations
- Arizona State University (US)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
- Corresponding author
- Mortensen, Chad R.
- Venue
- Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2010-02-05
- Volume
- 21
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 440-447
- ISSN
- 0956-7976 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-9280
- OpenAlex
- W2165533603
- Cited by
- 403
- References
- 45
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 22 · 2023: 27 · 2022: 41 · 2021: 63 · 2020: 46 · 2019: 12 · 2018: 16 · 2017: 25 · 2016: 14 · 2015: 19 · 2014: 27 · 2013: 25 · 2012: 19
- FWCI
- 28.42
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Psychological Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH064734, MH064734)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Death Anxiety and Social Exclusion
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
- Keywords
- disease avoidance, infection risk, perceived vulnerability to disease, self-perception, extraversion, agreeableness, openness to experience, avoidance behavior, arm movement, face perception, social avoidance
- MeSH terms
- Attitude to Health, Avoidance Learning, Character, Cues, Defense Mechanisms, Extraversion, Psychological, Female, Humans, Infections, Interpersonal Relations, Male, Pattern Recognition, Visual, Personality Inventory, Psychomotor Performance, Reaction Time, Self Concept
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