Don’t Sit So Close to Me!: Life History, Disease Salience, and the Behavioral Immune System

Abstract

To what extent might disease avoidant behavior be shaped by early life experiences? Do the conditions under which a person grows up lead them to be more or less wary of disease related threats in their immediate environment? The current work employs an in-person between-subjects study and a behavioral dependent variable in order to try to answer these questions. Participants were given the impression that they would be meeting a second participant and listened to a prerecorded introduction. This recording, a recording of a confederate of the researcher rather than an actual participant, either included no coughing (control condition) or frequent coughing (disease salience condition). The participants determined how proximate they would be to the other participant by arranging chairs for a purported meeting with this person. Finally, they were asked to complete questionnaires measuring disease avoidance, time perspective, life history, and unpredictability of the childhood environment. The objective of this study was to expand the current knowledge and understanding of the impact childhood experiences have on personality traits that influence disease-avoidant behaviors. Individuals with greater levels of childhood unpredictability, present fatalistic time perspective, and mate seeking motives were hypothesized to distance themselves less from a partner who displayed signs of illness. Our results did not provide evidence in support of our hypotheses. Possible explanations for this outcome are explored and potential remedies are discussed.