The behavioral immune system is a proactive system whose ultimate function is to help organisms protect themselves against potential sources of contamination.We investigated “avoidance responses” in adults since these are an important manifestation of the behavioral immune system. Participants were asked to imagine taking a seat in awaiting room with two people shown in photographs already seated at either end of the room: one healthy and the other described in one of three ways: (a) very sick, with a transmissible disease and visible symptoms, (b) very sick, with a nontransmissible disease and no visible symptoms, and (c) healthy. In the second part of the study, the participants rated theirwillingness to perform various actions in imaginary social situations involving different levels of contact (e.g., “shaking hands”) with each of the targets and their level of disgust at the thought of performing these actions. The findings showed greater avoidance of contagious people than of noncontagious or healthy people: (a) as indexed by the path taken to reach a seat and the number of empty chairs left between the protagonists (no significant modulations of these effects were found when individual differences in perceived vulnerability to disease (Duncan et al., 2009) were taken into account) and (b) as revealed by the propensity to perform certain actions (and by the disgust they evoked), especially those involving greater physical proximity (i.e., “shake her hand” and “take her in your arms”), with these tendencies being greater in the more germ-averse individuals.
Avoidance behaviors toward sick people in concrete interpersonal interactions
