A study has found that the more a person is revolted by the smell of body odour and urine the more likely they are to be right wing and want to secure national borders.
Research conducted by the University of Stockholm, Sweden, also found that left-wingers were less revolted by bad personal hygiene, reports MailOnline.
Psychologists believe that it represents a deep-rooted “defence mechanism” against contagious diseases.
Indeed, a Royal Society paper proposed in 2011 that disgust “evolved to motivate infectious disease avoidance”.
The study’s author, Dr. Jonas Olofsson, said: “There was a solid connection between how strongly someone was disgusted by smells and their desire to have a dictator-like leader who can suppress radical protest movements and ensure that different groups ‘stay in their places’.
“That type of society reduces contact among different groups and, at least in theory, decreases the chance of becoming ill.”
Researchers theorise a correlation between how test subjects wanted the world to be ordered and the rates of levels of disgust to bad breath, smelly feet, urine, faeces, sweat, and flatulence.
The more a person disliked bad smells, the greater they agreed with statements such as the need to trust “the proper authorities”, need a “mighty leader”, and want to ignore “noisy rabble-rousers”.
The paper, published in the Royal Society Open Science journal, also details that in a further experiment those who expressed greater aversion to bad smells were more likely to have supported Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
Studies published last year on the characteristics of political polar opposites found that attractive people were more likely be conservative and another found that socialists are more likely to be physically weak.