Hostile sexism and Right-Wing Authoritarianism as mediators of the relationship between sexual disgust and abortion stigmatizing attitudes

The sanctity of life: The role of purity in attitudes towards abortion and euthanasia

Although abortion and euthanasia are highly contested issues at the heart of the culture war, the moral foundations underlying ideological differences on these issues are mostly unknown. Given that much of the extant debate is framed around the sanctity of life, we argued that the moral foundation of purity/sanctity-a core moral belief that emphasises adherence to the "natural order"-would mediate the negative relationship between conservatism and support for abortion and euthanasia. As hypothesised, results from a nation-wide random sample of adults in New Zealand (N = 3360) revealed that purity/sanctity mediated the relationship between conservatism and opposition to both policies. These results demonstrate that, rather than being motivated by a desire to reduce harm, conservative opposition to pro-choice and end-of-life decisions is (partly) based on the view that ending a life, even if it is one's own, violates God's natural design and, thus, stains one's spiritual purity.

Design and study of psychometric properties of the Community Attitude to Abortion Scale (CAAS) with the Chilean population: Autonomy and Stigma

Introduction

Attitudes toward abortion are related to structural, cultural, and direct gender-based violence. This violence can affect women's mental, physical and reproductive health. Therefore, it is essential to know the nature of community attitudes toward abortion. Since we currently do not have an instrument that measures attitudes towards abortion in Chile, we set the objective of this study to design the Community Attitude to Abortion Scale (CAAS) and analyze its psychometric properties in a Chilean community population.

Methods

This work is an instrumental design study. Using a sampling of panelists by sociodemographic quotas, we obtained a sample of 1,223 participants with a mean age of 36.7 years (SD = 13.56).

Results

As a result, we obtained a scale of 18 items and two correlated factors, Autonomy and Stigma. This structure fits better as an Exploratory Structural Equations Model (ESEM). Both factors have excellent internal consistency. In addition, we obtained evidence of concurrent and discriminant validity: The scores on the factors of the Universal Religious Involvement Scale (I-E12) correlated negatively with Autonomy and positively with Stigma; participants with low levels of identification with a right-wing political orientation, with high levels of identification with a leftwing, pro-feminist, pro-LGBTQ +, and pro-euthanasia political orientation, obtained higher mean scores on Autonomy and lower on Stigma.

Discussion

The CAAS is an adequate tool for use with the Chilean community population, with evidence of consistency and validity. La CAAS is the first tool to measure attitudes to abortion in this country.

The behavioral immune system and conservatism as predictors of disease-avoidant attitudes during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique opportunity to explore the relationships between the behavioral immune system (BIS), Political Ideology, and disease avoidant attitudes (e.g., attitudes toward vaccination and attitudes about COVID-19). The BIS (e.g., disgust) is believed to be the first line of defense against pathogens and has been linked to socially conservative values. Ironically, however, the BIS has also been associated with anti-vaccination attitudes. In the current study, American participants (N = 139) completed an online survey with self-report measures of the BIS (e.g., disgust sensitivity and perceived infectability), political ideology, COVID-19 attitudes, and anti-vaccination attitudes. Disgust sensitivity was positively correlated with anti-vaccination attitudes but not significantly correlated with attitudes toward COVID-19. Perceived infectability, however, was negatively correlated with anti-vaccination attitudes and positively correlated with anxiety and knowledge about COVID-19. Right-wing authoritarianism and support for Trump were negatively correlated with knowledge and anxiety about COVID-19 and positively correlated with anti-vaccination attitudes.