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120. Does disease avoidance form a functional basis for stigmatisation towards the elderly?

journal contribution
posted on 2023-06-08, 18:01 authored by Neil Harrison, E Cooper, Hugo CritchleyHugo Critchley
Background: Elderly individuals frequently experience segregation and greater social exclusion. Infected/diseased individuals experience similar isolation-disease avoidance though this typically resolves on recovery. Oaten has proposed that activation of a disease-avoidance system, responding to visible signs denoting disease (irrespective of their accuracy) may underpin stigma. Diseased/sick individuals are perceived as more disgusting suggesting that disgust may mediate this link. To address this we investigated implicit disgust/fear responses to old/young faces using a lexical decision making task. Methods: Thirty healthy participants (20 male, range 19–51 years) performed a speeded word non-word judgement on 240 disgust, fear and neutral words presented after 3-s presentation of a young/old/fearful/disgusted face (240 images taken from validated face databases). Words were subsequently rated for disgust and fear to obtain 120 participant-specific words rated for either disgust or fear for use in subsequent analyses. Results: Congruent disgust words/faces were associated with significant RT slowing. 2 (disgust-neutral/young face) × 2 (disgust neutral word) rmANOVA interaction F(1, 29) = 6.30, p < 0.02. A weak trend to speeded RT responses was observed to congruent fear words/faces F(1, 29) = 1.98, p = 0.17. Critically, old faces preceding disgust (but not fear) words were also associated with significant RT slowing, interaction F(1, 29) = 5.24, p < 0.03. Conclusions: Pictures of elderly faces are associated with implicit disgust responses supporting the proposition that disease avoidance mechanism may underpin stigma toward the elderly.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Journal

Brain, Behavior, and Immunity

ISSN

0889-1591

Publisher

Elsevier

Volume

32

Article number

e35-e35

Department affiliated with

  • BSMS Neuroscience Publications

Notes

Volume 32, Supplement. PNIRS meeting abstracts.

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2014-08-05

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