Contagion heuristic

The contagion heuristic is a psychological heuristic which follows the law of contagion and the law of similarity, leading people to avoid contact with people or objects viewed as contaminated by previous contact with someone or something viewed as bad—or, less often, to seek contact with objects that have been in contact with people or things considered good. For example, people tend to view food that has touched the ground as contaminated by the ground, and therefore unfit to eat, or view a person who has touched a diseased person as likely to carry the disease (regardless of the actual contagiousness of the disease).

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