The Parasite Stress-Hypothesis

Humans as Pathogens

Introduction

In the summer of 1919, the world strived to recover from the “Spanish Flu Pandemic.” World leaders met in Paris, France to draft the Treaty of Versailles. This one event would eventually lay the foundations that would lead to the deaths of millions of people decades in the future.

Due to this very treaty, the world would see a second World War (rise of Nazi Germany), perpetual conflict in the Middle East (Sykes-Picot), and genocide in Africa (Rwanda).

After the first World War, Belgium was given colonial governance over the former German-controlled African state of Rwanda. As the Belgian’s took over, they favored the minority population of Tutsi over the majority Hutu people. This one decision catapulted a small African country into almost seventy-five years of tension and conflict between its own people.

In 1994, the culminating event to this internal civil war was the murder of hundreds of thousands of Tutsi and their allies and the displacement of over two million more people.

The Rwandan Genocide leaves many lessons to be learned. As Immaculee Ilibagiza chronicles in her book Left to Tell: Discovering God amidst the Rwandan Holocaust; in the early 1990s, there was an ever-increasing sentiment of disgust and distrust towards the Tutsi from the Hutu.

Hostilities between the two groups had erupted into armed conflict in 1990. As the tensions between the Hutus and Tutsis escalated, Hutu control over the public airwaves started to seed a poison into the daily minds and lives of the Hutu population.

Immaculee Ilibagiza (as well as historians) make special note of the language used by Hutus, calling the minority Tutsis on a daily basis “cockroaches” and “snakes.” Immaculee uses this anecdotal evidence to emphasize, in part, how it could come to pass in which neighbors took machetes to those living next door.

The constant broadcast to a Hutu population, which was upwards of eighty percent of the total Rwandan peoples, manipulated enough of the majority to bring about the atrocities that now are cemented in history.

But it is not the unfolding of the massacre itself to which this writing’s focus lies, but rather an analysis of how the Parasite-Stress Hypothesis (PSH) factored into this horrific event. As well as how to utilize the findings from Murray, Schaller, and Suedfeld’s Parasite-Stress Hypothesis to bring awareness to various forms of authoritarianism in the future.

Parasite-Stress Hypothesis

The concept of the Parasite-Stress Hypothesis was created to investigate to what extent disease and parasites in a community (or nation-state) influence a government becoming authoritarian. The authors looked to sort out whether authoritarianism arises independent of disease prevalence, or as a result of it. They found that “disease control has historically depended substantially on adherence to ritualized behavioral practices that reduced infection risk.” Additionally, those that did not conform to the established traditions “posed a health threat to self and others.” In essence, cultural and religious practices often arose from a need to circumvent infectious diseases within the community.

Yet, the authors add that “at a psychological level of analysis, empirical evidence reveals that the subjective perception of infection risk causes individuals to be more conformist, to prefer conformity and obedience in others, to respond more negatively towards others who fail to conform…” Meaning, if a group or community “perceives” a threat of infection, they will be more prone to navigate towards authoritarianism. Additionally, those individuals that perceive themselves as vulnerable to infection (whether they truly are or not) tend to favor more “xenophobic and ethnocentric attitudes.”

What Murray, Schaller, and Suedfeld also found in their research was that those authoritarian governments were less likely to arise from a colonizing of political and systemic ideologies. Rather, this “top-down control” originated from the individual, and worked its way to the group or governmental level. In other words, as individuals became warier of disease prevalence, they either voted for or personally demanded more and more control over the populace. They added that authoritarianism becomes even more likely (and aggressive) when scarcity is added to the mix. Therefore, a perceived threat of infectious disease, combined with prolonged scarcity will lean heavily towards authoritarian rule.

In their research article, Murray, Schaller, and Suedfeld many times make several references to the “perception” of vulnerability to infection. They also speak to the psychological evidence that supports their findings in which individuals will become more conformist and intolerant of behaviors that do not comply with implemented control measures. What is especially noteworthy is the statement “the subjective perception of infection risk.” It is not only when facing actual disease pathogens that people become authoritarian, but also the mere fact that the individual suspects there could be. Therefore, any disease threat detection (whether real or perceived) leads the individual to change daily behaviors and routines in an attempt to prevent infection.

Over time, these new behaviors are pushed out from the single person to the family, church, community, etc. This new mindset influences how people vote, which laws they support, how they interact with each other, what the local academic curriculum focuses on, and how they view foreigners (the unknown). It is reasonable to make a hypothesis that many cultural behaviors (especially those that are tyrannical or authoritarian in nature) are a direct result of the collected individual responses to the handling of an epidemic or pandemic.

The authors write in their conclusion that if their findings stay true, the PSH will not only have direct implications for human health and survival, but “they may also have indirect consequences for individual rights, civil liberties, and political freedoms.” This in turn potentially promotes more xenophobia and other prejudices linked with authoritarianism, while reducing “levels of creativity, innovation, and open-mindedness more generally.” Essentially, the average person becomes fearful of those who are different for fear of (real or perceived) threats to themselves and their family. The longer that fear goes unabated, the smaller the core of people and institutions that individual trusts.

The length of time that authoritarian rule maintains power over the populace, affects how much more the individual potentially becomes polarized towards their “tribe.” As a region or culture maintains a prolonged disease prevalence (or perception of one), those peoples “more strongly endorse 'binding' moral values that emphasize group loyalty, obedience, and respect for authority.” And therefore, there is very real potential for an increase in nepotism and ethnocentrism. Effectively, the individual will default to only those (other people, groups, institutions) whom they know and trust.

In their conclusion, Murray, Schaller, and Suedfeld note a “relationship between a conceptually distinct form of threat—the threat of infectious disease—and individuals’ authoritarian tendencies.” Emphasizing through their research that while other forms of threat can play a role in bringing about authoritarian rule; it is disease pathogens that have the most influential and lasting impact. They also go on to express that there is “additional evidence indicating that individuals are sensitive to disease-connoting cues within their immediate environment.” That these “cues” influence “functionally adaptive shifts in cognition and behavior” in the individual, local group, and the national group as a whole. Essentially, these shifts in “cognition and behavior” from emotional cues bring about the new normalizing of actions and attitudes into the culture at large.

Recognize that the authors mention “disease-connoting cues” as an evidence-based measure that influences authoritarian rule. This means that not only does direct, prolonged threat of disease pathogens promote governmental control (local and national), but also the mere suggestion of such pathogens evokes emotional responses that lend toward authoritarianism. Effectively, Pavlov’s classical conditioning is manifested at the individual, cultural, and societal levels.

So therein lies the conflict; liberal and libertarian values clashing with authoritarian and governmental control. But when do authoritative (not to be confused with authoritarianism) measures become all-out authoritarianism?

Final Thoughts

As a society, we find ourselves in the grip of COVID, constant riots, a push for Critical Theory and Critical Race Theory in almost all our institutions, and a divisive election. We have state and local policies that force people to wear masks. Many cities have shut down businesses (some permanently) for the sake of pathogen prevention. Local governments are running segregated “caucuses” in the name of racial justice. People having a night out are accosted and (some) forced to display allegiance to Black Lives Matter.

As a society, we are straying really close to weaponizing disgust sensitivity. Within many of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion trainings, it is fairly commonplace for materials and instructors to disparage White and “White Adjacent” groups. Pejoritives towards Whites and Non-People of Color who do not comply with the Woke ideology is becoming more frequent.

In fact, the very Anti-Racist programming that is permeating schools, offices, and Government advocates for an aggressive state of intolerance for those that are resistant. It is now common discourse on Social Media and in person for the words “fascist,” “white supremacist,” and “racist” to be utilized to render the recipient sub-human. The intention of using these words is simple: comply and grovel, or be labeled a “witch” and burnt at the stake of public opinion.

Let us hope that we can pull back from collapsing into an authoritarian society. One that treats those we disagree with as if they are a disease pathogen to be eradicated.