Children's and adults’ understanding of the “disgust face”

By the age of 4 years, children (N=120) know the meaning of the word disgust as well as they know the meaning of anger and fear; for example, when asked, they are equally able to generate a plausible cause for each of these emotions. Yet, in tasks involving facial expressions (free labelling of faces, deciding whether or not a face expresses disgust, or finding a “disgust face” in an array of faces), a majority of 3- to 7-year-old children (N=144) associated the prototypical “disgust face” with anger and denied its association with disgust (25% of adults on the same tasks did so as well). These results challenge the assumption that all humans easily recognise disgust from its facial expression and that this recognition is a precursor to children's understanding of the emotion of disgust.     

Will you touch a dirty diaper? Attitudes towards disgust and behaviour

Individuals differ in their willingness to engage with disgusting stimuli (e.g., dirty diapers). We propose that such differences are associated with attitudes towards disgust. Specifically, we predicted that people with less negative attitudes towards disgust (i.e., those who evaluate disgust less negatively) would be more willing to engage with disgusting stimuli. We asked participants to engage with disgusting stimuli in the laboratory and used two measures that assess behavioural and affective or cognitive components of attitudes towards disgust. As predicted, less negative attitudes towards disgust were associated with greater engagement with disgusting stimuli, above and beyond the current experience of disgust and the tendency to experience disgust. These findings stress the importance of attitudes towards emotions in understanding emotion-relevant behaviour.     

Do children endorse psychosocial factors in the transmission of illness and disgust?

The present studies examined beliefs concerning the impact of psychosocial factors in the transmission of contagious illness, injuries, and disgust. In Studies 1 and 2, participants ranging from preschoolers through adults judged the likelihood that a character would get sick (or injured) after being contaminated by another individual who was either of no stated relation to the character or who was a best friend, a disliked person, or a family member. Studies 3 and 4 examined effects of psychosocial relatedness on judgments of disgust (a psychological response). Study 5 examined the influence of germs on judgments of disgust. Overall, preschoolers through 2nd graders judged that any type of relatedness decreased the possibility of contracting illness from another person. However, for disgust, preschoolers judged that negative contagion would have a more powerful effect, particularly in the presence of germs. Relatedness had no effect on judgments of injury transmission. These results suggest that young children treat the psychological and biological domains as distinct but mutually interacting.     

Just an anger synonym? Moral context influences predictors of disgust word use

Are verbal reports of disgust in moral situations specific indicators of the concept of disgust, or are they used metaphorically to refer to anger? In this experiment, participants read scenarios describing a violation of a norm either about the use of the body (bodily moral) or about harm and rights (socio-moral). They then expressed disgust and anger on verbal scales, and through facial expression endorsement measures. The use of disgust words in the socio-moral condition was largely predicted by anger words and only secondarily by disgust faces, whereas in the bodily moral condition the use of disgust words was predicted to a similar extent by disgust faces and anger words. Angry faces, however, never predicted disgust words independently of anger words. These results support a middle-ground position in which disgust words concerning socio-moral violations are not entirely a metaphor for anger, but bear some relationship to other representations of disgust. In the case of socio-moral violations, however, the use of disgust language is more strongly related to anger language, and less strongly to facial representations of disgust than in the case of bodily moral violations.     

The Disgust Scale-R: A valid and reliable index to investigate separate disgust domains?

The Disgust Scale (DS; Haidt, McCauley, & Rozin, 1994) is the most widely used instrument for assessing disgust propensity (i.e., individual tendency to experience disgust). Yet, psychometric evaluations of the DS are scarce while the literature shows that the reliability of its subscales are unacceptably low. Recently, it was suggested to reduce the number of subscales (Olatunji, Sawchuk, de Jong, & Lohr, 2007a). This study is a first exploration of this reduced three-factor solution in an independent sample. In study I, we examined whether a three-factor solution improves psychometric properties of the DS. Students from Maastricht University (N = 535) and the University of Groningen (N = 432) completed the DS. In study II, the DS was revised by dropping redundant items and revising its scoring format. The DS-R was administered to students from the University of Groningen (N = 472) and Ghent University (N = 41) to study its psychometric properties. The revisions improved the psychometric features of the DS, and showed that the DS-R is a valid and reliable index to establish core disgust, animal-reminder disgust, and contamination.     

That's disgusting! …, but very amusing: Mixed feelings of amusement and disgust

This study examines mixed feelings of amusement and disgust. Participants (N=102) reported their affect before and after watching a film clip depicting disgusting humour. While watching the clip participants were instructed to take the perspective of either an uninvolved observer or of the clip's protagonist. As expected this clip produced mixed feelings of amusement and disgust, and perspective moderated changes in affect and mixed feelings. Disgust increased equally in both conditions and amusement increased only in the observer condition. As a result mixed feelings of amusement and disgust were more intense in the observer condition. As the first study to demonstrate moderation of mixed feelings, this work adds to the extant literature on mixed feelings and has implications for emotion research.     

Is disgust sensitive to classical conditioning as indexed by facial electromyography and behavioural responses?

Earlier studies provided preliminary support for the role of classical conditioning as a pathway of disgust learning, yet this evidence has been limited to self-report. This study included facial electromyographical (EMG) measurements (corrugator and levator muscles) and a behavioural approach task to assess participants’ motivation-to-eat the actual food items (conditioned stimuli, CS). Food items served as CS and film excerpts of a woman vomiting served as unconditioned stimuli (US). Following acquisition the CS+ (neutral CS paired with US disgust) was rated as more disgusting and less positive. Notably, the conditioned response was transferred to the actual food items as evidenced by participants’ reported lowered willingness-to-eat. Participants also showed heightened EMG activity in response to the CS+ which seemed driven by the corrugator indexing a global negative affect. These findings suggest that classical conditioning as a pathway of disgust learning can be reliably observed in subjective but not in disgust-specific physiological responding.     

Does the source of an interpersonal odour affect disgust? A disease risk model and its alternatives

Using self‐report, this paper explored whether a malodour's source (self, liked person, stranger) influences hedonic responding. In Study 1, participants were presented with vignettes describing various encounters with malodours. Negative affect increased when body malodours emanated from a stranger rather than oneself (the source effect). Study 2 replicated this finding using a smell diary, in which participants recorded their hedonic responses to real odours. Study 3 determined that this source effect was not due to a social status or a halo effect. Study 4 examined the role of exposure and attachment. Exposure, but not attachment, best accounted for the source effect. Study 5 examined whether perceived disease risk varied by source and whether this could account for the source effect. The findings suggested that there are two mechanisms by which disgust responses to malodours can be modulated to reflect the disease risk of their source: implicitly, by mere exposure, and explicitly, by knowledge of risk. In the discussion, we argue that avoiding contact with disease‐causing agents is adaptive, and that this is implicitly modulated by exposure, so that the cues for disease emanating from people encountered less frequently are treated with more caution. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Immoral,infectious, or both? How disgust sensitivity predicts judgments of violations against COVID-19 mitigation actions

Violations against mitigation actions to prevent the spreading of the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID-19, such as not wearing a mask or not practicing social distancing, were seen as immoral and could also increase the likelihood of spreading the virus. In two studies (N1 = 318, N2 = 293), we found that moral and pathogen disgust sensitivity differentially predicted perceptions of such COVID-19 violations against mitigation actions, framed as a moral, pathogen, or on a good-bad dimension, albeit in a less specific way than initially hypothesized (e.g., regarding the pathogenic framed violations, not only pathogen but also moral disgust was associated with higher perceptions of infectiousness). These results suggest that individual differences, especially in pathogen disgust (and, more inconsistently, moral disgust), are important when evaluating violations against mitigation actions. Further research on the role of moral disgust is needed.     

Extending the the behavioral immune system to political psychology: Are political conservatism and disgust sensitivity really related?

Previous research suggests that several individual and cultural level attitudes, cognitions, and societal structures may have evolved to mitigate the pathogen threats posed by intergroup interactions. It has been suggested that these anti-pathogen defenses are at the root of conservative political ideology. Here, we test a hypothesis that political conservatism functions as a pathogen-avoidance strategy. Across three studies, we consistently find no relationship between sensitivity to pathogen disgust and multiple measures of political conservatism. These results are contrasted with theoretical perspectives suggesting a relationship between conservatism and pathogen avoidance, and with previous findings of a relationship between conservatism and disgust sensitivity.     

When sex doesn’t sell to men: mortality salience,disgust and the appeal of products and advertisements featuring sexualized women

Although men typically hold favorable views of advertisements featuring female sexuality, from a Terror Management Theory perspective, this should be less the case when thoughts of human mortality are salient. Two experiments conducted in South Korea supported this hypothesis across a variety of products (e.g., perfume and vodka). Men became more negative towards advertisements featuring female sexuality, and had reduced purchase intentions for those products, after thinking about their own mortality. Study 2 found that these effects were mediated by heightened disgust. Mortality thoughts did not impact women in either study. These findings uniquely demonstrate that thoughts of death interact with female sex-appeal to influence men’s consumer choices, and that disgust mediates these processes. Implications for the role of emotion, and cultural differences, in terror management, for attitudes toward female sexuality, and for marketing strategies are discussed.