The smell of prejudice: individual differences in body odor disgust sensitivity predict prejudice towards a fictive unfamiliar group

The Behavioral Immune System (BIS), is a psychological mechanism adapted to detect and avoid pathogen threats. According the BIS framework, prejudice towards unfamiliar groups might be partially driven by concerns on their dissimilarity in terms of hygiene and food preparation. Disgust is a core and universal emotion supposedly evolved to avoid disease (pathogen threats) and olfaction plays a pivotal role in evoking this emotion. We investigated whether individual differences in Body Odor Disgust Sensitivity Scale (BODS) correlate with unfavorable attitudes towards a fictive unfamiliar group, the Dhrashnee refugees. We ran a pre-registered online questionnaire study on a sample of N = 800 participants from an MTurk pool. Participants rated their attitudes towards the Dhrashnee, perceptions of similarity with the Dhrashnee and general attitudes towards immigration. Results fully supported our pre-registered hypotheses: higher levels of BODS are associated with higher levels of prejudice and this association is mediated by perceived dissimilarity in hygiene and food preparation practices, a result that is consistent with the theoretical framework provided by the BIS.