The Body Stripped Down

Abstract— According to terror management theory, cultural beliefs and standards provide protection from fears associated with mortality by convincing individuals that their existence matters more than that of any mere mortal animal. The body threatens the efficacy of such mechanisms by reminding us that we are animals nonetheless, and therefore fated to death. I present research demonstrating that existential concerns contribute to uneasiness with the body, especially regarding sex, and also to pervasive concerns with how the body measures up to cultural standards, most obviously regarding women's appearance. These findings show that in effort to defend against threats associated with the body's physicality, people may deny themselves pleasure and endanger their health.     

Children,Object Value,and Persuasion

We argue that, contrary to standard views of development, children understand the world in terms of hidden, nonobvious structure. We review research showing that early in childhood, items are not understood strictly in terms of the features that present themselves in the immediate “here‐and‐now,” but rather are thought to have a hidden reality. We illustrate with two related but distinct examples: category essentialism, and attention to object history. We discuss the implications of each of these capacities for how children determine object value. Across a broad range of object types (natural and artifactual, real and virtual, durable and consumable), an item is evaluated very differently, depending on inferred qualities and context. In this way, children's early‐emerging conceptual frameworks influence how objects attain both psychological and monetary value, and may have important implications for which messages children find most persuasive.     

厌恶和恐惧情绪对跨期选择的不同影响：基于ERP的研究

本研究运用事件相关电位技术(ERPs)考察厌恶和恐惧情绪对跨期选择的影响。其中,厌恶和恐惧情绪采用情绪面孔图片进行启动,分析跨期选择任务中评估阶段所诱发的ERP成分。行为结果发现,与中性面孔相比,厌恶面孔启动使个体倾向于选择立即奖赏。ERP结果发现,在选项评估阶段,厌恶面孔比中性和恐惧面孔启动诱发更大的P2、P3和LPP波幅。这说明,厌恶情绪促使个体投入更多的注意和动机资源对跨期选项进行评估,进而使个体倾向即时满足。     

三领域厌恶情绪的时程加工模式：攻击性个体差异的视角

本研究利用事件相关电位技术结合内隐任务范式探究了三领域厌恶情绪的加工过程,同时测量了 个体的攻击水平,以期找到加工厌恶情绪的个体差异。在加工早期（130-190ms）,生理厌恶刺激和道德厌恶刺激均可得到识别;在加工中期（300-350ms） ,三种厌恶刺激相互分离,三种厌恶情绪之间得到了区分;在加工晚期（400-600ms） ,个体则对性厌恶刺激最为敏感; 不同攻击水平个体在加工厌恶刺激的过程中并未表现出明显的个体差异。结果表明, 在神经层面上,三维结构下的厌恶情绪确实能够得到识别与区分。     

Defensive emotions and evaluative judgements: Sensitivity to anger and fear predicts moral judgements,whereas sensitivity to disgust predicts aesthetic judgements

Aesthetic and moral evaluations engage appetitive and defensive emotions. While the role played by pleasure in positive aesthetic and moral judgements has been extensively researched, little is known about how defensive emotions influence negative aesthetic and moral judgements. Specifically, it is unknown which defensive emotions such judgements tap into, and whether both kinds of judgement share a common emotional root. Here, we investigated how participants' individual sensitivity to disgust, fear, anger and sadness predicted subjective judgements of aesthetic and moral stimuli. Bayesian modelling revealed that participants who were more sensitive to anger and fear found conventional and moral transgressions more wrong. In contrast, participants who were more sensitive to disgust disliked asymmetrical geometric patterns and untidy rooms more. These findings suggest that aesthetic and moral evaluations engage multiple defensive emotions, not just disgust, and that they may rely on different defensive emotions as part of their computational mechanism.     

Sex,germs, and health: pathogen-avoidance motives and health-protective behaviour

Objective: Recent work suggests that the psychology of pathogen-avoidance has wide-reaching effects on how people interact with the world. These processes – part of what has been referred to as the behavioural immune system – are, in a way, our ‘evolved’ health psychology. However, scholars have scarcely investigated how the behavioural immune system relates to health-protective behaviours. The current research attempts to fill this gap.

Design: Across two cross-sectional studies (N = 386 and 470, respectively), we examined the relationship between pathogen-avoidance motives and health-protective behaviour.

Outcome Measures: The studies used self-reported measures of attitude and intention as indicators of health-protective behaviour.

Results: Data collected in Study 1 revealed that pathogen-avoidance motivation related to participants’ attitude and intention towards sexually transmitted infections screening. High levels of pathogen-avoidance motivation were also related to having had fewer sexual partners, which partially mediated the effect of pathogen-avoidance variables on testing motivation. Study 2 extended these findings by showing moderate associations between pathogen-avoidance motivation and a broad range of health-protective behaviours, including but not limited to pathogen-related health concerns.

Conclusion: We argue that understanding and targeting pathogen-avoidance psychology can add novel and important understanding of health-protective behaviour.     

The structure of disgust: domain specificity in relation to contamination ideation and excessive washing

The primary goal of the present study was to employ confirmatory factor analysis to compare two theoretical models regarding the factor structure of disgust (N=307). The two-factor model of Animal Reminder and Core disgust proposed by Rozin et al. (2000) demonstrated superior model fit over a one-factor model that has been implicated in prior research. However, contrary to theoretical predictions, categorizing Hygiene disgust as Core disgust rather than Animal Reminder disgust provided an overall better fit for the two-factor model. The second aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between the empirically derived two-factor model and contamination ideation and excessive washing using structural equation modeling. Findings indicated that the Contamination Ideation and Excessive Washing latent factor was specifically related to Core disgust (domain specific) and negatively related to Animal Reminder disgust. The relevance of these findings in the context of future research investigating the role of disgust in specific anxiety disorders is discussed.     

The facial pattern of disgust, appetence, excited joy and relaxed joy: an improved facial EMG study

The purpose of the study was to investigate the facial muscle pattern of disgust in comparison to appetence and joy, using an improved facial EMG method. We analyzed the activity of nine facial muscles in forty healthy subjects. The subject group was randomly divided into two groups (oversaturated vs. hungry) of ten women and ten men each. Four different emotions (disgust, appetence, excited-joy and relaxed-joy) were induced by showing pictures from the IAPS. Pre-visible facial muscle activity was measured with a new facial EMG. A Visual Analog Scale (VAS) was established. Disgust is represented by a specific facial muscle pattern involving M.corrugator and M.orbicularis oculi, clearly distinguishing it from the facial patterns of appetence and joy. The intensity of disgust is stronger in a state of hunger than under oversaturation and is altogether stronger in females than in males. Our findings indicate the possibility to explore the entire emotion system successfully through a state-of-the-art psychophysiological method like our EMG device.     

Yikes! The Effect of Incidental Disgust and Information on Public Attitudes During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Existing research has focused extensively on the role of emotions such as anger, fear, and enthusiasm in explaining public opinion, but less is known about the importance of disgust, an innate disease-related emotion. To study the independent and joint effects of disgust and information, I draw on the case of the COVID-19 pandemic. I demonstrate that experimentally induced incidental disgust and exposure to information about how to flatten the curve of the COVID-19 cases have distinctive effects on political, racial, and health attitudes. Independently, exposure to information affects preferences only for restrictive policies to fight the spread of the virus. In contrast, the stand-alone effect of incidental disgust, as well as its joint effect with exposure to information, are responsible for attitude change toward both pandemic-relevant and irrelevant policies, Asian minorities, and prevention measures. Importantly, the study finds that citizens respond symmetrically to disgusting stimuli and information across degrees of political awareness, ideology, partisan affiliation, and trait authoritarianism. The results draw attention to the far-reaching implications of disgust on public opinion under threatening conditions.     

厌恶情绪对法律判断的影响:基于进化心理学的视角

进化心理学认为,厌恶是人类在疾病、资源缺乏等适应性压力情境下,为抵御有害物质入侵通过自然选择而形成的进化心理机制。根据进化的观点,道德厌恶是由生理厌恶进化而来。道德厌恶有利于避免违反社会规范的行为。厌恶的激活会使道德判断更加苛刻,由此提出厌恶在法律判断中的几点启示:(1)避免直觉情绪对判断的干扰;(2)保持审议厅清洁,避免外在环境引起的厌恶情绪干扰法律判断;(3)对陪审团成员进行个体意识性和厌恶敏感性测量,避免道德过度警觉的现象发生。