Research Symposium

BIO

Shae Steenbergh is a second-year student at Florida State University pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Criminology with a minor in Psychology and a Certificate in U.S. Intelligence Studies. She has been recognized on the President’s List or Dean’s List each semester for her academic performance. Shae’s academic interests focus on the intersection of criminology, psychology, and intelligence analysis, particularly how psychological factors influence threat perception and investigative decision-making. She participates in the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) in the March Research Laboratory, where she contributes to research examining contamination threat perceptions and their relationship with authoritarian attitudes across ideological spectrums. Her work includes analyzing survey-based behavioral data, applying validated psychological scales, and translating quantitative findings into concise analytical summaries. In addition to her research, Shae has experience in data analysis, including cleaning and analyzing large datasets and creating dashboards to visualize trends and support data-driven decision-making. She also serves as an Open-Source Intelligence intern in a disaster intelligence analysis program, where she gathers and analyzes publicly available information to produce structured intelligence reports that support situational awareness for public safety stakeholders. Shae is an active member of Lambda Alpha Epsilon – the American Criminal Justice Association. Following graduation, she hopes to pursue a career in federal law enforcement or intelligence analysis, with a focus on investigative and national security-related work.

Contamination Threat Bias Predicts Left and Right-Wing Authoritarian Support​

Abstract

This research focuses on threats of contamination, which we define as latent spreadable harms. Individual differences in how biased one is in their perceptions of a contamination threat as particularly harmful or spreadable may have social cognitive implications. However, much research has focused on sensitivity to disgust, one emotional response to contamination threats, rather than on biased perceptions of the threats themselves. We thus developed the contamination threat bias scale (CTBS) to fill this gap. To test the predictive validity of our scale, we tested whether specific subscales can predict authoritarian support. Authoritarianism is best understood as a motivation for group conformity rather than individual autonomy, is activated by perceived threat, and is expressed separately via left-wing authoritarianism (LWA) and right-wing authoritarianism (RWA). We test whether biases regarding certain domains of contamination threat predict authoritarianism as a measure of social cognitive attitudes. Data were collected online through Prolific from a sample representative of the U.S. population on basic demographics. Participants rated how harmful and spreadable they believed different contamination sources were, including human biological, nonhuman biological, food and water, environmental, and public-space contaminants. These responses were used to predict support for RWA and LWA. We found that when controlling for every other subscale, food and water contaminants most strongly predict RWA, whereas environmental contaminants most strongly predict LWA. The findings show individual biases in contamination threat perception have social cognitive consequences, and thus the CTBS has useful applications in social cognitive research more generally.

Keywords: Threat bias, Social cognition, Individual differences, Pathogens, Contamination