DUBNER: Jody Avirgan, David Pizarro has been telling us about the politics of disgust, which are really interesting, and lead to a lot of interesting thoughts and questions. Anything factual we should know?
AVIRGAN: This isn’t exactly a fact check. But I do want to go back to how you actually measure disgust. You ask people about hypothetical scenarios, and ask them to rate how disgusted they were. Do you trust that?
PIZARRO: That’s one way. Other people have done the work of correlating—
AVIRGAN: Of actually disgusting people in real time — love it.
PIZARRO: Of actually disgusting people. So they’ve brought people into the lab and they’ve asked them to do really gross but safe things. So, would you eat a piece of chocolate shaped like dog poop?
DUCKWORTH: Yes.
DUBNER: I think Angela’s answer says less about her liberalism than about her chocolate attitude.
PIZARRO: That may be right. And that’s why it’s a noisy measure.