Behavioral Immune System and Social Conformity – BISSCo

PRIN PROGETTI DI RICERCA DI RILEVANTE INTERESSE NAZIONALE – (2022-2024).

 

The Behavioral Immune System (BIS) framework contends that we evolved cognitive processes, affective reactions, and behaviors to avoid pathogen threats. Concerns about increased disease transmission risk (such as in times of pandemics) may push people to conform more to social norms and behaviors, such as hygiene practices, to align with the collective strategies that minimize disease exposure. The same concerns may however also lead to increased out-group discrimination, stigmatization and prejudice toward individuals that are perceived as different or unfamiliar. Despite both in-group conformity and out-group avoidance can be seen as adaptive responses to pathogen threats, the causal mechanisms linking BIS to intergroup interactions are still poorly understood.

 

By employing a multidisciplinary approach involving psychology, sociology and economics, and a variety of experimental methods such as surveys, online and lab experiments, the aim of BISSCo is to explore such links to better understand the different mechanisms driving our social responses under pathogen threat.