2021 Volume 7 Issue 1 Pages 37-46
This study focuses on disgust evaluation as a factor promoting social exclusion behavior toward a specific group and its members. The study included 40 undergraduate students (mean age＝20.05, SD＝1.12) who were evaluated for the process of acquiring disgust evaluations of a group and its members and the possibility of changing this evaluation. Experiments conducted from the perspective of evaluative conditioning validated the establishment of the evaluative conditioning of disgust for a group symbol paired with disgust stimuli. Thus, a higher-order evaluative conditioning procedure revealed that the evaluations of members categorized in the disgust group were relatively worse. These effects were observed only under conditions where pathogen primes were presented in advance, thereby indicating that the behavioral immunity system may be involved in the acquisition of disgust evaluation of specific group members. The in-group recategorization procedure did not improve this evaluation. We discuss the possible interpretations of these results and proposed measures to manage with social exclusion behavior.
