Disgust Rhetoric Shapes—and Sometimes Backfires on—Gay Rights Opinion

What the Study Asks

Eric van der Vort and Shana Kushner Gadarian examine how appeals to disgust influence public attitudes toward gay rights in the United States. The authors ask whether disgust functions as an effective rhetorical tool to mobilize opposition to gay rights, and when such appeals succeed or provoke pushback.

Why Disgust Matters

Disgust is an emotion that helps people draw social boundaries and enforce norms, especially around perceived violations of sexual purity. Because it ties moral feeling to visceral reactions, disgust-based rhetoric is theorized to powerfully shape public opinion on issues related to sexuality and morality.

How the Research Was Done

• The authors analyze responses from the 1993 American National Election Studies (ANES) to assess broader, historical associations between disgust-related attitudes and views on gay rights.
• They supplement that archival analysis with two original studies that directly test the persuasive impact of disgust-focused messaging on individuals' attitudes toward gay rights and related issues.

Key Findings

• Disgust messaging can be a potent influence: appeals that frame gay rights in terms of sexual impurity or contamination shift public opinion in predictable directions.
• The persuasive power of disgust is conditional. For some audiences, disgust appeals prompt rejection of the message itself—people interpret the speaker as morally indignant or hostile and resist the appeal.
• The net effect is therefore double-edged: disgust can reinforce boundaries and heighten opposition among receptive audiences, but it can also provoke backlash and reduce persuasion among others.

Implications for Political Communication and Scholarship

This work highlights emotion-based rhetoric as a consequential but contingent tool in American politics. It shows that moralized emotions like disgust do not uniformly move public opinion; their effectiveness depends on audience receptivity and how the message is perceived. The findings matter for scholars of public opinion and political communication and for practitioners crafting messages about sexuality, rights, and morality.

What Comes Next

The study points to the value of tracing when and why audiences interpret disgust appeals as persuasive versus offensive, a question that shapes how advocacy groups, media, and politicians construct messages about contested moral issues.