The Germ Theory of Democracy, Dictatorship, and Your Cherished Beliefs - Pacific Standard: The Science of Society

The Germ Theory of Democracy, Dictatorship, and Your Cheris...
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The Germ Theory of

Democracy,
Dictatorship, and All
Your Most Cherished
Beliefs
BY ETHAN WATTERS (HTTP://WWW.PSMAG.COM/AUTHOR

/ E T H A N - W A T T E R S / ) March 03, 2014 6:00 AM
Mosquito. (Photo: Rolf E. Staerk/Shutterstock)
Is culture just a side effect of the struggle to avoid

disease?
One morning last fall, the evolutionary biologist
13. May/Jun 2014
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Randy Thornhill (http://biology.unm.edu/Thornhill

/rthorn.htm) was standing with me in front of the
MORE ARTICLES "

(HTTP://WWW.PSMAG.COM/CATEGORY
gorilla enclosure at the Albuquerque zoo
/MAGAZINES/MAY-JUNE-
(http://www.cabq.gov/culturalservices/biopark
2014/) ARCHIVE "
/zoo). He was explaining a new theory about the
(HTTP://WWW.PSMAG.COM/MAGAZINE/)
origins of human culture when Mashudu, a

10-year-old western lowland gorilla, decided to help
SUBSCRIBE "
illustrate a point. In a very deliberate way, Mashudu

sauntered over to the deep cement ravine at the
front of his enclosure, perched his rear end over the
edge, and did his morning business.
Mashudu, I suspected, had just displayed what
(HTTPS://WWW.PUBSERVICE.COM
/MMC/SUBNEW.ASPX?PC=MM)
COLUMNISTS
evolutionary theorists call a behavioral immune

1 of 20
responsea concept central to Thornhills big

theory. So I asked him whether I was right about
5/19/14, 4:37 PM
The GermMashudu.
Theory of Democracy,
Dictatorship,
Cheris...
Pooping
downhillandisYour
pretty
smart,
Thornhill said after some consideration. He got his

waste as far away from him as possible. I think that
would probably count as a disease avoidance
behavior.
It might seem strange to fixate on how a gorilla goes
about answering the call of nature. But according to
Thornhills hypothesis, much of what we humans
like to think of as politics, morality, and culture is
motivated by the same kind of subconscious
JIM RUSSELL:
Migration and
Development in an
Age of Growing
Economic
/navigation Inequality
/business- (http://www.psmag.com
/navigation
economics
/business/migration- economics
development/migrationage-growing-developmenteconomic- age-growinginequality- economicinequality-81728/)
81728/)
instinct that likely drove Mashudu to that ledge.

Anyone with
a basic grasp
of biology
knows that
all animals
have
What kind of government do

you live under? Who are your
sexual partners? How do you
treat strangers? All of these
questions may mask a more
fundamental one: What
germs are you warding off?
immune
systems that battle pathogensbe they viruses,
TOM JACOBS:
What Does the

Type of Computer
You Use Actually
Say About Your
/navigation Personality?
/business- (http://www.psmag.com
/navigation
economics
/business/typeeconomics/typecomputer- computeruse-sayuse-saypersonality- personality79672/)
79672/)
bacteria, parasites, or fungion the cellular level.

And its also fairly well understood that animals
sometimes exhibit outward behaviors that serve to
ward o disease. Just around the corner from the
fastidious Mashudu, Thornhill and I watched an
orangutan named Sarah grooming her
six-month-old son Pixel, poring through his hair for
parasites. Some species of primate, Thornhill told
me, will ostracize sick members of the group to
avoid the spread of disease. Cows and other
MICHAEL WHITE:
No, the World's

Health Problems
Won't Be Solved
With an App
/navigation (http://www.psmag.com
/navigation
/nature/natureand-technology
and-technology
/worlds/worlds-healthhealthproblemsproblems- wont-solvedwont-solved-app-81655/)
app-81655/)
ungulates are known to rotate their movements

among pastures in such a way as to avoid the larvae
of intestinal worms that hatch in their waste. And in
ant societies, only a small number of workers are
given the task of hauling away the dead, while sick
ants will sometimes leave the nest to die apart from
the group.
2 of 20
At the most quotidian level, Thornhill finds it easy

to convince people that humans likewise manifest
5/19/14, 4:37 PM
The Germsuch
Theory
of Democracy,behaviors
Dictatorship,to
and
Your Cheris...
instinctual
avoid
infection and
illness. Some of these habits very much parallel

those seen in other creatures. I admitted to
Thornhill that I had recently been displaying a bit of
grooming behavior myself after the youngest
primate in my care came home from preschool
itching with head lice. Like Mashudu, we humans
remove waste from our living quarters. We ostracize
our sick, at least to the extent that we expect those
with the flu to stay home from work or school. And
KEVIN LINCOLN:
'Godzilla' Might Be
This Year's Most
Realistic Movie
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/books/godzilla-mightand-culture
years-realistic/godzilla- movie-81585/)
mightyearsrealisticmovie81585/)
similar to the lowly ant, we assign a small number

of our fellows the solemn duty of hauling away and
disposing of our dead. On examination, everyday
life is full of small defensive moves against
contamination, some motivated by feelings, like
disgust, that arise without conscious reflection.
When you open the door of a gas station bathroom
only to decide you can hold it for a few more miles,
or when you put as much distance as possible
between yourself and a person who is coughing and
RYAN JACOBS:
The Functions of
'Um,' 'Like,' 'You
Know'
/navigation /navigation/booksand-culture
/books/um-likeand-culture
know-language/um-likewords-valleyknow-languagegirl-81572/)
wordsvalleygirl-81572/)
sneezing in a waiting room, you are displaying a

behavioral immune response.
But these individual actions are just the tip of the
iceberg, according to Thornhill and a growing camp
of evolutionary theorists. Our moment-to-moment
psychological reactions to the threat of illness, they
suggest, have a huge cumulative eect on culture.
Not only thatand heres where Thornhills theory
really starts to fire the imaginationthese deep
interactions between local pathogens and human
social evolution may explain many of the basic
dierences we observe between cultures. How does
BETTINA CHANG:
The Ever-Evolving
Difficulties of
Giving Housing to
the Homeless
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/navigation
/health/healthand-behavior
and-behavior
/landlords- /landlordsrecreation- recreationessential- essential-housingfirst-programhousing81439/)
firstprogram81439/)
MORE RECENT COLUMNS #
your culture behave toward strangers? What kind of

government do you live under? Who are your sexual
partners? What values do you share? All of these
questions may mask a more fundamental one: What
germs are you warding o?
3 of 20
The threat of disease is not uniform around the
5/19/14, 4:37 PM
The Germworld.
Theory of
and Your
Cheris...
InDemocracy,
general, Dictatorship,
higher, colder,
and
drier regions http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/bugs-li...
(https://www.pubservice.com
/mmc/subnew.aspx?PC=MM)
have fewer infectious diseases than warmer, wetter
climates. To survive, people in this latter sort of

terrain must withstand a higher degree of pathogen
stress. Thornhill and his colleagues theorize that,
over time, the pathogen stress endemic to a place
tends to steer a culture in distinct ways. Research
has long shown that people in tropical climates with
high pathogen loads, for example, are more likely to
develop a taste for spicy food, because certain
compounds in these foods have antimicrobial
properties. They are also prone to value physical
attractivenessa signal of health and
QUICK STUDIES
Mapping El Nios
Looming Effect on
Global Croplands
/navigation/natureand-technology
/el-nino-loomingeffect-globalcroplands-81619/)
A monster El Nio could be on its
way, and it will likely have a
complicated effect on the
world's breadbaskets.
immunocompetence, according to evolutionary

theoristsmore highly in mates than people living
in cooler latitudes do. But the implications dont
stop there. According to the pathogen stress theory
of values, the evolutionary case that Thornhill and
his colleagues have put forward, our behavioral
immune systemsour group responses to local
disease threatsplay a decisive role in shaping our
various political systems, religions, and shared
What Does the Type

of Computer You Use
Actually Say About
Your Personality?
/navigation/businesseconomics/typecomputer-use-saypersonality-79672/)
Macs might be cool and exciting,
but PC users just don't care.
moral views.
If they are right, Thornhill and his colleagues may
be on their way to unlocking some of the most
stubborn mysteries of human behavior. Their theory
may help explain why authoritarian governments
tend to persist in certain latitudes while
democracies rise in others; why some cultures are
xenophobic and others are relatively open to
The Functions of Um,

Like, You Know
/navigation/booksand-culture/um-likeknow-languagewords-valleygirl-81572/)
It isn't just valley girl babble.
strangers; why certain peoples value equality and

individuality while others prize hierarchical
structures and strict adherence to tradition. Whats
more, their work may oer a clear insight into how
societies change. According to Thornhills findings,
striking at the root of infectious disease threats is by
far the most eective form of social engineering
4 of 20
available to any would-be reformer.
Getting Nagged by
Loved Ones Might Be
Your Death Sentence
/navigation/healthand-behavior
/naggingargumentative-lovedones-death-81521/)
People who clash with their
5/19/14, 4:37 PM
partners and children are more

The GermIfTheory
of Democracy,
Dictatorship,
and Your Cheris... theory http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/bugs-li...
you were
looking
for a paradigm-shifting
likely to die.
about human behavior, step right up. Once we

started looking for evidence that pathogens shape
culture, Thornhill told me, we began to find it in
damn near every place we looked.
You still hear people say

that the old South will rise
again, Thornhill says. But I
doubt it has a chance unless
disease prevalence goes up
dramatically.
TH O R N H I LL WAS STE E R E D TOWAR D the topic
of the human psychological reaction to disease in
Automation Has
Encouraged the Pilots
Wandering Mind
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With increasing automation,
pilots may be thinking about the
cold cuts they're going to buy at
the deli instead of focusing on
the flight.
the early 2000s by a young graduate student advisee

named Corey Fincher (http://www2.warwick.ac.uk
/fac/sci/psych/people/cfincher/). Fincher had
arrived at the University of New Mexico
(http://www.unm.edu/) intending to study the
mating behavior of rattlesnakes. After a time,
however, he instead became curious about the
evolutionary eects of disease on human cultural
behaviorand particularly about the question of
why cultures tend to fall along a spectrum between
individualist and collectivist dispositions.
Psychologists and other social scientists have long
been curious about this robust dierence between
human populations. In strongly collectivist
societies, group membership forms the foundation
of ones identity. Sacrificing for the common good
and maintaining harmonious ties with family and
kin are expected. By contrast, in strongly
individualist societies like those of the United
MORE QUICK STUDIES #
THE BIG ONE

The top one
percent of
professional
musicians,
ranked by
concert
earnings, more
than doubled
their share of
concert
revenues in
America
between 1982
and 2003, going
from 26 to
56 percent.
May/June 2014
Kingdom, the U.S., Australia, and the Netherlands,

individual rights are valued above duties to others.
Ones identity does not derive from the group, but
rather is built through personal actions and
achievements. Although these dierences have
5 of 20
been confirmed by many cross-cultural studies in a

variety of dierent ways, no one had come up with a
5/19/14, 4:37 PM
The Germconvincing
Dictatorship,
and Your
Cheris... why it
evolutionary
theory
to suggest
would be advantageous for one group of people to

become more collectivist and another group to
become more individualist.
Fincher suspected that many behaviors in
collectivist cultures might be masks for behavioral
immune responses. To take one key example,
collectivist cultures tend to be both more
xenophobic and more ethnocentric than
individualist cultures. Keeping strangers away
might be a valuable defense against foreign
pathogens, Fincher thought. And a strong
preference for in-group mating might help maintain
a communitys hereditary immunities to local
disease strains. To test his hypothesis, Fincher set
out to see whether places with heavier disease loads
also tended toward these sorts of collectivist values.
Working with Damian Murray and Mark Schaller,
two psychologists from the University of British
Columbia, and Thornhill, Fincher compared
existing databases that rated cultural groups on the
individualist-collectivist spectrum with data
collected from the Global Infectious Diseases and
Epidemiology Network
(http://www.gideononline.com/) and other sources.
The team paid special attention to nine pathogens
(including malaria, leprosy, dengue, typhus, and
tuberculosis) that are detrimental to human
reproductive fitness. What the team found was a
strong correlation between collectivist values and
places with high pathogen stress. In 2008, Fincher,
Thornhill, Schaller, and Murray published a major
paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society B
(http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/) that laid
out the connection.
Thornhill and Fincher found further evidence for
6 of 20
the pathogen stress theory by looking at

geographical regions that had not only severe
5/19/14, 4:37 PM
The Germdisease
Theory ofstress
Democracy,
and Your
Cheris...
but Dictatorship,
also a highly
diverse
patchwork ofhttp://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/bugs-li...
local pathogen populations. The critters that make

us illnot only the viruses and bacteria, but also the
ticks, flies, and mosquitoes that spread themare
tiny and lack the ability to regulate their own heat
as larger organisms do. They often flourish only in
very narrow climatic zones, where they are adapted
to certain temperature and moisture levels. As a
result, pathogen threats can be highly localized. One
study, for instance, found at least 124 genetically
distinct strains of the parasite Leishmania
braziliensis across Peru and Bolivia.

If you were to live in such a pathogenically diverse
place, you and your family would likely develop a
resistance or immunity to your local parasites. But
that defense might be useless if you were to move in
with a group just a short distance awayor if a
stranger, carrying a foreign pathogen load, were to
insinuate himself into your clan. In such places,
then, it would be important for neighboring groups
to be able to tell the dierence between us and
them. With that thought in mind, Thornhill and
his colleagues made a prediction: that regions with
a balkanized landscape of localized parasites would
in turn display a balkanized landscape of localized
customs and conspicuous cultural dierences
among human populationsdialects, unique
religious displays, distinctive art and music, and the
like. While there is much more research to be done,
early findings suggest thatparticularly when it
comes to the development of local languages and
religionspathogen stress does appear to spawn
cultural diversity.
A set of more cautious researchers would likely
have circled the wagons after unveiling their theory
and concentrated on building a body of evidence to
7 of 20
defend their early claims. Having a novel

explanation for why some cultures are collectivist
5/19/14, 4:37 PM
The Germwhile
Theoryothers
of Democracy,
Dictatorship, andwould
Your Cheris...
are individualist
probably
guarantee ones place in social science lore.

Thornhill and Fincher, however, didnt stop for a
breath. By the time the two published a major paper
in Behavioral and Brain Sciences
(https://journals.cambridge.org/action
/displayJournal?jid=BBS) in 2012, they had
marshaled evidence that severe pathogen stress
leads to high levels of civil and ethnic warfare,
increased rates of homicide and child maltreatment,
patriarchal family structures, and social restrictions
regarding womens sexual behavior. Moreover, these
pathogen-avoidant collectivist tendencies, they
wrote, coalesce over time into repressive and
autocratic governmental systems. Want to
understand the rise of fascism, dictatorship, and
ethnocentric campaigns that dehumanize
outsiders? Look to the prevalence of pathogen
threats. Over the years, scholars like William H.
McNeill and Jared Diamond have argued that germs
and geography exert an under-appreciated
influence on the rise and fall of societies. But for
Thornhill and Fincher, human psychological
adaptations to the threat of disease are nothing less
than the missing link in our understanding of
culturea fundamental key to our collective values
that researchers and philosophers over human
history have overlooked.
8 of 20
5/19/14, 4:37 PM
(http://d1435t697bgi2o.cloudfront.net/wp-content
/uploads/2014/02/mosquito-feature.jpg)(Illustration: Tom
Cocotos)
Over the last few years, an increasing number of

papers from other social scientists have backed the
theory. While many of these researchers work with
the same large data sets and long timescales that
Fincher and Thornhill study, others have figured out
ways to tease out the behavioral immune response
in real time, on a smaller scale. Schaller and his
colleagues, for example, set up a test to see if
disease cues could influence laboratory subjects
opinions of foreigners. Schallers team had one
group of subjects watch a slideshow about germs
and disease while another group watched a show
about everyday accidents and dangers. The
researchers then told the subjects that the Canadian
government was going to spend money to attract
immigrants to the country. As Schaller predicted,
the test subjects who had been cued with the
disease presentation were less inclined to spend
money to attract people from unfamiliar countries.
Many researchers remain unconvinced that
pathogen stress is as important at Thornhill and
Fincher suggest. Voicing a common critique, the
anthropologist Scott Atran has argued that
Thornhill and Finchers make too precipitous a leap
from correlation to cause in their analysis of data.
9 of 20
Other critics have pointed to potential

counterexamples to the pathogen stress theory: If
5/19/14, 4:37 PM
The Germstrong
Theory of
Democracy,is,
Dictatorship,
and Your
Cheris...
religiosity
as Thornhill
and
Fincher claim,http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/bugs-li...
an adaptive response to pathogen stress, then why

do some religious people behave in such
pathogenically promiscuous waysengaging in
blood rituals, circumcision, piercing or tattooing, or
tromping o to proselytize in strange lands? Still
other researchers have stepped in to suggest that
the level of in-group preference in a culture can be
better understood in relation to the quality and
accessibility of local governmental institutions: The
more dependable the institutions, the less people
have to invest in their family and local groups to
meet basic needs.
During our
interview at
the zoo,
Thornhill
appeared
The most effective way to

change political values from
conservative to liberal,
Thornhill says, is through
health-care interventions.
neither boastful about his theory nor particularly

defensive about criticism. At 69 years old, he is the
picture of an avuncular, somewhat rumpled
professor, happy to spin out his ideas. At this stage
in his career, he said, he no longer spends time
worrying that other social scientists are not yet on
board or that they think he may be overreaching. He
is fond of quoting Albert Einstein, who once said,
the grand aim of all sciences is to cover the greatest
number of empirical facts by logical deduction from
the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms. Of
course, grand hypotheses can be easy to come up
with: just eavesdrop outside any dorm-room door.
Theories that actually explain broad patterns in
nature, Thornhill acknowledges, are extremely rare.
But he is convinced he has one of those
extraordinary beasts by the tail. Other social
scientists, he tells me, will eventually catch up. (He
and Fincher are at work on a magnum opus about
10 of 20
their theory that they hope will be out within the

year.)
5/19/14, 4:37 PM
The GermThornhill
Dictatorship,
and Your Cheris...theories.
is no stranger
to controversial
While he made his professional name in 1983 with a

groundbreaking book called The Evolution of Insect
Mating Systems (http://www.amazon.com

/The-Evolution-Insect-Mating-Systems
/dp/1583484205), he became something of a public
figure in 2000 by publishing a book, with the
anthropologist Craig T. Palmer, entitled A Natural
History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual

Coercion (http://www.amazon.com/NaturalHistory-Rape-Biological-Coercion/dp/0262201259).
Their argumentthat rape needed to be understood
as an evolved sexual strategy in malesflew in the
face of the politically correct view of the day: that
rape could only be seen as an pathological act of
violence and control. Talk-show bookers loved the
authors controversial take, and Thornhill gamely
ran the gauntlet, even appearing on The Today
Show to explain the theory.

Popular reaction to the idea was heated.
Evolutionary behavioral theorists often struggle
against the misapprehension that describing a
behavior as evolved is the same thing as justifying
it. Thornhill was no exception. As much as he tried
to be clear that he was not making an excuse for
sexual assaults, he received a series of death threats
on his answering machine, and one detractor
apparently attempted to break into his home. The
university assigned a campus police ocer to walk
him to and from class. Thornhill, who even admirers
call an academic cowboy, was shaken but not
cowed.
While the pathogen stress theory has not reached
The Today Show level of pop-cultural

consciousnessnor anywhere near the same level
of controversyit has certainly rued feathers
11 of 20
within the social sciences. The scope of the theory is

so broad, and its claims are so dramatic, that it
5/19/14, 4:37 PM
The Germtreads
Theory of
andintellectual
Your Cheris... turf. It
onDemocracy,
virtuallyDictatorship,
everyones
really crosses disciplines, Thornhill admitted.

Economics, political science, psychology,
anthropology. Each of these fields has dierent
assumptions about how culture works and how
theyve come to be like they are. For that reason, it is
sometimes very hard to break into those interdisciplinary debates. You just have to hope that the
evidence will win out.
S O M E ACAD E M I CS HAVE S U G G E STE D that
while the pathogen stress theory might help explain
some of the deep origins of human history, it has
little relevance to the modern era. Indeed, in much
of the developed world today, major pandemics and
many historically common infectious diseases are
largely a thing of the past. Chronic conditions like
diabetes, cancer, obesity, and heart disease are by
far the largest health concerns. Walk into an
American hospital suering from malaria or the
measles and you will more than likely be regarded
as an oddity; its quite possible that no one on the
sta will have any personal experience treating
your condition.
But in Thornhill and Finchers view, its not just the
threat of infection that shapes culture. The absence
of disease threats, they argue, creates a dierent set
of cultural conditions that, taken together, are the
necessary precursors to modernity. Collectivist
values, despite their potential eectiveness at
fencing out disease, come at a steep cost to the
cultures that harbor them. As Thornhill explained to
me, keeping strangers at arms length can limit trade
and stymie a cultures acquisition of useful new
technologies, materials, and knowledge.
So, as humans moved into drier and colder and less
disease-ridden climates, Thornhill says, they likely
12 of 20
discarded their costly xenophobic disease-avoidant

ways and became less beholden to tradition, more
5/19/14, 4:37 PM
The Germwilling
Theory oftoDemocracy,
Dictatorship,
Cheris...
trade with
others, and
andYour
more
accepting of http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/bugs-li...
technological innovations. Instead of censuring the

individual maverick thinker in the group, societies
eventually came around to rewarding those who
challenged convention. With those changes came
the rise of wealth and the spread of education to a
larger and larger segment of the population. The
more educated the population, the more people
demanded participation in their governments.
Democracies, premised upon the rights and
freedoms of individuals, were the natural outcome.
Moreover, the democratizing eect of lowering
disease threats, they argue, can happen quite
quicklyeven within a generation. Freedom House
(http://www.freedomhouse.org/), an organization
that tracks governments, civil liberties, voter
participation, and equality around the globe,
considers 46 percent of all countries to be free
today, as opposed to just 29 percent in 1972.
Thornhill points out that this rise coincided with an
era in which major health interventions, including
vaccine programs, the chlorination of drinking
water, and eorts to reduce food-borne disease,
became commonplace in many parts of the world.
Thornhill is not shy about the implications. If
promoting democracy and other liberal values is on
your agenda, he says, health care and disease
abatement should be your main concern.
O N C E YO U
B E CO M E
AWAR E of
the
pathogen
stress theory,
Once we started looking for

evidence that pathogens
shape culture, Thornhill told
me, we began to find it in
damn near every place we
looked.
it has a kind of earwormish power. Even the most

obvious counterexamples that spring to mind can,
13 of 20
on closer inspection, seem to oer oblique and even

surprisingly overt support for some version of the
5/19/14, 4:37 PM
The Germpathogen
Dictatorship,
and Yourconspicuous
Cheris...
stress theory.
Its rather
that http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/bugs-li...
Nazi Germanyprobably the most famous modern

example of an ethnocentric, bellicose, authoritarian
regimearose in a northern clime, and not in some
tropical latitude. But consider that the Nazi party
began its rise to power in the aftermath of a Spanish
flu pandemic that had killed over two million
people across Europeover half a million in
Germany alone. And remember that much of
Hitlers poisonous rhetoric specifically suggested
that Jews were disease carriers. Again and again, his
rants portrayed Germany as an organism fighting
diseasecaused, among other things, by Jewish
bacteria. Did Hitler manage to manipulate an
unknown psychological mechanism that had been
triggered by the threat of disease in the German
population?
There are several disquieting aspects to Fincher and
Thornhills theory. Fincher is careful to say up front
that their hypothesis is not meant to telegraph value
judgments or guidance, but its hard not see the
pathogen stress theorys distinction between
collectivist and individualist societies as a kind of
politically charged, world-historical morality play.
On one hand you have collectivist cultures rife with
xenophobia, racism, adherence to authority, and
restrictive religions. On the other side are liberal
cultures that promote equality, open-mindedness,
democracy, and the acceptance of outsiders. One set
of cultural values is a psychological defense against
sickness; the other, a logical extension of life in a
healthy society. In this light, the pathogen stress
theory can seem to oer evolutionary justification
for the cultural values that Thornhill and Fincher
themselves espousea reminder, some might say,
that not only history, but science as well, is written
by the victors. But for his part, Thornhill is confident
14 of 20
in the evidence underlying his theory, and relatively

untroubled by the implications. If you increase
5/19/14, 4:37 PM
The Germhealth
Theory of
Democracy,
and Your
Cheris...
then
peopleDictatorship,
will become
more
liberal and
happier, he told me at the zoo. I dont think that is

a bad idea.
The pathogen stress theory is also hard to swallow
in a way that evolutionary psychology arguments
often areespecially for those who fancy the idea
that we are in control of our thoughts, emotions, and
behaviors. The next time someone tells you about
their religious beliefs, try convincing them their
firmly held convictions spring from an unconscious
disease-avoidance mechanism. Or, alternatively, try
telling a liberal acquaintance that their beliefs
about openness and inclusion are only as deep as
the good luck that has allowed them to live in a
relatively disease-free zone.
It is true that the pathogen threat theory doesnt
integrate with the profundity we feel when we talk
about values, Thornhill admitted while eating a
sandwich at the zoo cafe. When we think about our
religious or political beliefs we feel like weve
decided on them. They dont feel like a defense
against disease. They feel like something more
meaningful. They feel like the truth.
Thornhill and Finchers analysis takes such a
satellite view of humanityderiving its insights
from vast data setsthat it can feel alien and cold.
Thornhill started his career as a behavioral ecologist
studying insects, and his perspective on human
populations can at times seem every bit as distant
as his perspective on the anonymous populations of
bugs he once investigated. There is, however, at
least one respect in which Thornhills research
comes down to a deeply personal, human scale.
Thornhill grew up in Alabama in the 1940s and 50s.
He says he witnessed firsthand the rank sexism,
15 of 20
racism, and xenophobia that was rampant in the

South during that period. And he is well acquainted
5/19/14, 4:37 PM
The Germwith
Theory
of Democracy,
Dictatorship,
and ties
Your and
Cheris...
the
regions strong
family
firm
religious beliefs. But he is also aware of a somewhat

lesser known set of facts about his native soil.
Around the time of his childhood, Southern states
were finally getting a hold on a pair of diseases that
had long plagued the region: malaria and
hookworm. These diseases, writes Peter Hotez, the
founding dean of the National School of Tropical
Medicine (http://www.bcm.edu/education/schools
/national-school-of-tropical-medicine/) at Baylor
University, had turned generations of Southerners
into anemic, weak, and unproductive children and
adults. Not surprisingly, Thornhill believes that the
collectivism of the old Souththe adherence to
tradition, ethnocentrism, and suspicion of outsiders
that marked his childhoodstemmed from its
historically high pathogen load.
Similarly, he attributes the progress hes seen
toward a more egalitarian South to the alleviation of
the regions most pernicious health problems. You
still hear people say that the old South will rise
again, but I doubt it has a chance unless disease
prevalence goes up dramatically, he says. Maybe if
you knock out all the sewage treatment plants and
stop giving antibiotics to sick kids, it would have a
chance.
As fortune would have it, the United States may
have just embarked on a natural experiment to test
Thornhill and Finchers pathogen stress theory.
Conservatives (with their collectivist values
emphasizing religion, tradition, and regionalism)
and liberals (with their individualist values of
openness, anti-authoritarianism, and
experimentation) have spent the better part of 10
years now manning their battle lines over the issue
of universal access to health insurance coverage. If
16 of 20
Thornhill and Fincher are right, conservatives may

have had more reason to oppose the Aordable
5/19/14, 4:37 PM
The GermCare
Theory
of Democracy,
Your Cheris... Might an http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/bugs-li...
Act
than theyDictatorship,
currentlyand
understand.
eective health intervention such as Obamacare

move the country, on some deep psychological level,
away from conservative values and toward more
liberal ones? Is it possible that there are utterly
unacknowledged stakes in this battle?
Thornhill has pondered these questions privately.
While hes not sure whether Obamacare is strong
enough medicine to move the dial significantly in
terms of disease levels, he is certain that the most
eective way to change political values from
conservative to liberal is through health-care
interventions and advances in providing clean
water and sanitation. That is clearly the conclusion
that the bulk of evidence supports, Thornhill says.
If you lower disease threats in countries they
become more liberal, and that is true for states in
this country. The implication is that if you
eectively target infectious diseases then you will
liberalize the population.
At the same time, well beyond the borders of the
United States, the coming decades may supply a
wholly dierent test of the pathogen stress theory.
Higher temperatures, elevated sea levels, and
increased precipitation in some areasall predicted
to accompany climate changeare expected to
bring tropical diseases to higher latitudes and
elevations in the coming decades. Pathogens that
once perished in cold climates and dry soils may
find new congenial zones of heat and moisture, and
new host populations. Incidents of dengue fever in
the U.S., for example, are expected to spread beyond
Hawaii and the Mexican borderlands as climate
change creates expanding habitats for the mosquito
that carries the virus. Unless eective health
interventions ward o these new threats, humans in
17 of 20
ever higher latitudes may again have to resort to

their embedded psychological and cultural
5/19/14, 4:37 PM
The Germdefenses.
Dictatorship,
Your Cheris...
Collectivist
group and
behaviors
may yet stagehttp://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/bugs-li...
a comeback.
This post originally appeared in the March/April

2014 (http://www.psmag.com/category/magazines
/march-april-2014/) issue of Pacific Standard
(http://psmag.com/) as The Germ Theory of
Democracy, Dictatorship, and Your Most Cherished

Beliefs. For more, subscribe to our print magazine
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Ethan Watters is a contributing editor at Pacific
Standard and the author of Crazy Like Us: The
Globalization of the American Psyche.
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The Germ Theory of Democracy, Dictatorship, and Your Cheris...

POLITICS & LAW (HTTP://WWW.PSMAG.COM/CATEGORY/NAVIGATION/POLITICS-AND-LAW/) BUSINESS &

The Germ Theory of

BY ETHAN WATTERS (HTTP://WWW.PSMAG.COM/AUTHOR

Is culture just a side effect of the struggle to avoid

One morning last fall, the evolutionary biologist

13. May/Jun 2014

Can Anyone Stop the Man Who

Randy Thornhill (http://biology.unm.edu/Thornhill

MORE ARTICLES "

gorilla enclosure at the Albuquerque zoo

2014/) ARCHIVE "

/zoo). He was explaining a new theory about the

origins of human culture when Mashudu, a

illustrate a point. In a very deliberate way, Mashudu

evolutionary theorists call a behavioral immune

responsea concept central to Thornhills big

Thornhill said after some consideration. He got his

instinct that likely drove Mashudu to that ledge.

What kind of government do

What Does the

bacteria, parasites, or fungion the cellular level.

No, the World's

ungulates are known to rotate their movements

At the most quotidian level, Thornhill finds it easy

illness. Some of these habits very much parallel

similar to the lowly ant, we assign a small number

sneezing in a waiting room, you are displaying a

your culture behave toward strangers? What kind of

The threat of disease is not uniform around the

climates. To survive, people in this latter sort of

immunocompetence, according to evolutionary

What Does the Type

The Functions of Um,

strangers; why certain peoples value equality and

available to any would-be reformer.

partners and children are more

about human behavior, step right up. Once we

You still hear people say

the early 2000s by a young graduate student advisee

MORE QUICK STUDIES #

THE BIG ONE

Kingdom, the U.S., Australia, and the Netherlands,

been confirmed by many cross-cultural studies in a

would be advantageous for one group of people to

the pathogen stress theory by looking at

local pathogen populations. The critters that make

braziliensis across Peru and Bolivia.

defend their early claims. Having a novel

guarantee ones place in social science lore.

The Germ Theory of Democracy, Dictatorship, and Your Cheris...

Over the last few years, an increasing number of

Other critics have pointed to potential

an adaptive response to pathogen stress, then why

The most effective way to

neither boastful about his theory nor particularly

their theory that they hope will be out within the

While he made his professional name in 1983 with a

Mating Systems (http://www.amazon.com

History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual

Show to explain the theory.

The Today Show level of pop-cultural

within the social sciences. The scope of the theory is