Merely seeing disease symptoms may promote aggressive immune response

ScienceDaily (Apr. 28, 2010) — Just seeing someone who looks sick is enough to make your immune system work harder, according to a new study in which volunteers looked at pictures of sick people.

This may help fight off pathogens, says Mark Schaller from the University of British Columbia who conducted the research. "It seems like it's probably good for the immune system to be responding especially aggressively at times when it looks like you are likely to be coming into contact with something that might make you sick."

Previous research has found that, when people see someone who looks sick, they have a psychological response -- they feel disgusted and want to stay away. Schaller, Gregory E. Miller, Will M. Gervais, Sarah Yager, and Edith Chen, all at the University of British Columbia, wanted to go one step farther, to see if looking at sick people might also affect how the immune system itself works.
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