And individual factors play a significant role, as people with certain dispositional characteristics (such as chronic anxiety or concern about disease) are more likely to respond to perceived threats.

Finally, Threat management systems are sensitive to context in which threats occur. Responses to self-protection or disease avoidance are more likely to be activated when circumstances suggest increased vulnerability (e.g., darkness or fear of infection)...

This precautionary bias is adaptive because, most of the time, avoiding a real danger is more important than making minor mistakes. However, in the modern context, this bias can contribute to psychological disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Third, the systems face an inherent problem: errors in interpreting threat cues. While some signals, like a bad smell or an angry facial expression, often correctly indicate a threat, interpretation is not always perfect: an angry face might be wrongly perceived as a threat of real aggression.

Similarly, the disease avoidance system focuses on individuals with characteristics indicating infection risk, evoking emotions like disgust to encourage avoidance. These systems have effects not only at the behavioral level but also at biological and cultural levels, which enhance survival.

Second, the systems promote coordinate cascades of adaptive responses: For example, when facing a physical safety threat, the self-protection system focuses attention on individuals perceived as dangerous, triggering emotions like fear that promote avoidance...

This functional specificity is also observed in other species, such as rodents🐀, which use different olfactory cues to detect predators versus contamination (i.e., parasitized conspecifics)...

Moreover, the two systems may be associated with different emotional responses: fear and disgust, respectively. The associated neurobiology of the two systems also differs...

The first idea is that threat management systems are domain-specific and focused: the self-protective system focuses on attention cues related to potential aggression, such as an angry facial expression, whereas the disease avoidance system focuses on visible signs of potential contamination...

Naturally, we would expect to care more about what’s happening with our neighbors than with someone living on another continent. This doesn’t mean we can’t feel empathy for people we don’t personally know, but we tend to be more affected by what happens to members of our group.

Our species evolved in small-group contexts, where we had to be highly attentive to all the social dynamics within our group. Every evaluation mattered for survival; in terms of reputation, finding cooperative partners, and avoiding punishment...

However, this doesn’t mean we don’t care about what happens to people we don’t know! Rather, it show some of the reasons why we care more about our own community or about people who share our values and identity...

People judge transgressions less harshly when they happened far away, long ago, or were approved by local authorities. 🌍These findings challenge the idea of universal moral rules and show how cultural evolution and context shape our moral judgments and ethical decisions...

www.researchgate.net/profile/Mich...

Moreover, the pandemic may have triggered a shift in the political landscape(Karwowski et al., 2020; Kempthorne & Terrizzi, 2021), reflecting an increased need for closure, which may, in turn, lead to a preference for right-wing candidates, often perceived as symbols of stability and predictability.

Previous research has shown that individuals with heightened perceptions of infection risk tend to adopt socially conservative attitudes (Terrizzi et al., 2013)...

This model proposes that the prevalence of infectious diseases and parasites in a region shapes the evolution and expression of human behaviors, values, and social structures...

Juan Pablo Arroyave's research focuses on how we make decisions regarding a transgression when we face a threat. His presentation is titled "Threat and mind-blind judgements".