Disgust wins the award as the single most irresponsible emotion, a feeling that has led to extreme in-group—out-group divisions followed by inhumane treatment. Disgust’s trick is simple: Declare those you don’t like to be vermin or parasites, and it is easy to think of them as disgusting, deserving of exclusion, dismissal, and annihilation. All horrific cases of human abuse entail this kind of transformation, from Auschwitz to Abu Ghraib.
(From Marc D. Hauser’s ‘Moral Minds’, page 199)
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