Behavioral Immune System and Social Conformity – BISSCo Funded under the PRIN PROGETTI DI RICERCA DI RILEVANTE INTERESSE NAZIONALE – (2022-2024). Open position as a research grant n° ISTC-AdR-386-2023-RM

call published on URP CNR and on ISTC HERE

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.

The aim of BISSCo is to explore such links to better understand the different mechanisms driving our social responses under pathogen threat. In particular, LABSS-ISTC will lead a task aimed at understanding the mechanisms responsible for linking BIS and negativity towards outgroups. Since pathogen avoidance motivations may lead both to avoid outgroups and conform to ingroups, both mechanisms can contribute to explaining the emergence of outgroup discrimination under pathogen threat. By employing behavioral experiments (e.g., economic games), this task will help disentangle the mechanisms at play.

For any further information, please contact:

Eugenia Polizzi: eugenia.polizzi@istc.cnr.it