This whole conservatism-as-mental-disorder idea has really sparked a cottage industry, hasn’t it:

People who are sensitive to interpersonal disgust – for example, they dislike sitting on a bus seat left warm by a stranger – are more likely to hold right-wing attitudes and to be racist.

That’s according to Gordon Hodson and Kimberly Costello, who say that in the same way that core disgust guards the bodily boundary, interpersonal disgust may serve to guard cultural boundaries, by averting us from people who are not members of our group, and drawing us to those who are.

But don’t worry. The researchers are closing in on a cure for racism:

Hodson told the Digest his lab are testing desensitisation procedures in the hope of reducing prejudice: “If disgust sensitive people are more prejudiced then efforts to reduce disgust sensitivity through systematic desensitisation and related procedures (i.e. presenting participants with basic disgusting stimuli and intergroup disgust stimuli under controlled settings paired with relaxation) should help to reduce prejudice.”

Now, if they could only cure conservatism.