The Yuck Factor When Disgust Meets Discovery

Abstract

Imagine you lived in a drought-stricken area and were told that from now on your tap water would come from “recycled sewage.” Might the word “yuck” describe your gut response? If your answer is yes, then you’ve got lots of company. Most people instinctively reject fearsome or repugnant things, especially when those things are unfamiliar. If shared by masses of people, that collective repugnance can fuel a social force with the power to shape environmental and public policy. The so-called yuck factor, a term coined by University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur Caplan to describe the influence of instinctive responses against new technology, has a wide scope. In California, it’s derailed projects for converting wastewater into drinking water in several municipalities. It’s been cited in public opposition to foods from cloned animals and genetically modified (GM) crops. It’s even been named as a barrier to programs for trading carbon dioxide emission credits on the open market, says Asa Lofgren, an economist at Goteberg University, Sweden, who points to widespread aversion to the notion that companies could buy rights to pollute. Generally speaking, “yuck factor” has become a catchall phrase to describe technophobic sentiments that vary by what triggers them. The disgust elicited by drinking reclaimed wastewater, for instance, differs from the moral outrage induced by human cloning. Meanwhile, science routinely generates technologies that—though they might initially be seen as repugnant—are also borne of real need. For instance, wastewater reclamation, the process by which sewage water is treated to augment drinking, industrial, and agricultural water supplies, responds to the growing problem of drought. In this case, the yuck factor—exacerbated perhaps by the use of terms such as “recycled sewage” and “toilet-to-tap”—stands in the way of a solution to dwindling water supplies that experts generally view as cost-effective and safe. Galvanized by the yuck factor, opponents in Redwood City, California, delayed a wastewater reclamation project for nearly two years. And about six hours north, in Fountain Valley, a group dubbed the Revolting Grandmas led opposition to the Orange County Groundwater Replenishment System, which is the largest wastewater reclamation plant in the world. Responding to opponents’ demands, engineers now pump highly treated wastewater leaving the plant into an underground basin, where it filters through layers of sand and gravel before being piped to the homes and businesses that use it. Ironically, the water coming out of the basin isn’t as clean as the treated water going into it, according to an article in the 8 August 2008 New York Times Magazine—during its trip through the natural filters it picks up trace elements and contaminants that must later be removed by the water utility. The underground filtration step is taken, says director of recharge operations Adam Hutchinson, strictly to allay psychological concerns. But the yuck factor could also be said to serve a useful purpose. Excrement does pose health risks, and the public is therefore wise to ask questions about the safety of drinking reclaimed wastewater. Likewise, genetic technologies have the capacity to fundamentally alter life as we know it, in some cases with uncertain benefits. By giving pause to technological progress, the yuck factor opens new opportunities for dialogue between scientists and the public. In some cases, that dialogue might show that a technology’s benefits outweigh the repugnance that goes with it. In others, it pushes scientists to make a better case for why a given technology should be pursued at all. Given the influence wielded by instinctive responses to new technology, Caplan asserts that policy makers need to better understand these responses and take them seriously. “Savvy marketers and good advertising people know how to appeal to emotion, gut rationality, and visceral fears,” he says. “That’s what they’re selling—the manipulation of ‘yuck’—and more often than not, this is what determines who wins or loses in science policy debates. If you really want to overcome that, you have to become sophisticated about how experts manipulate emotion. And if you’re going to assess what’s admissible in terms of public policy, your argument has got to be better than to simply say ‘I don’t like it.’”