Psychology Of Disgust Research Paper

Most scholars recognize a special relation between disgust and ingestion; the facial expression of disgust represents an oral and nasal ‘rejection,’ the word ‘disgust’ in English and some other languages means ‘bad taste,’ and nausea, the physiological signature of disgust, is directly related to, and inhibitory of, ingestion.

However, it is also clear that, cross culturally, the emotion of disgust is elicited by a wide range of elicitors, most of which have nothing to do with food (Miller 1997, Rozin et al. 1993). In certain respects, disgust can be thought of as the emotion of civilization. The history and trajectory of disgust, from a foodrelated emotion to a much more general emotion, is the central concern of this research paper.

1. Disgust As An Emotion

Disgust is the only basic emotion that is specifically related to a motivation (hunger) and to a particular bodily location (mouth). Along with other basic emotions, as described by Paul Ekman (Ekman 1992, Scherer and Wallbott 1994), disgust has a characteristic behavior (withdrawal), physiological state (nausea), and facial expression. The facial expression of disgust has received most attention from Ekman (Ekman and Friesen 1975), Izard (1971), and Rozin (Rozin et al. 1994). The expression centers on the mouth and nose, and is characterized principally by a wrinkling of the nose, a raising of the upper lip, and a gape. The mental or feeling component of disgust is often described as revulsion; it is typically of shorter duration than most other.

2. The Meaning Of Disgust

Rozin et al. (1993), based on surveys in Japan and the United States, designate nine domains of disgust: certain foods or potential foods, body products, animals, sexual behaviors, contact with death or corpses, violations of the exterior envelope of the body (including gore and deformity), poor hygiene, interpersonal contamination (direct or indirect contact with unsavory human beings) and certain moral offenses. Disgust has to do with offensive elicitors which are wide in range, but exclude many other types of negative events, such as pain, and those that elicit the emotions of fear, sadness, and anger.

Rozin et al. (1993) propose that disgust originated in animals as a response to distasteful food. These authors hold that in cultural evolution, the output side of disgust (expression, physiology, behavior) remained relatively constant, but the range of elicitors and meanings expanded dramatically. Disgust came to mean offensiveness to the self or soul, rather than bad taste, its origin. Indeed, it was proposed that, in humans, distasteful items do not elicit the full emotion of disgust. The expansion of elicitors and meanings in cultural evolution was attributed to the process of preadaptation; use of a mechanism evolved in one system for a novel use in another system. For example, the mouth, and in particular the teeth and tongue, evolved for processing food, but these structures were co-opted in human evolution for use in speech articulation. The expansion of the meanings of disgust is proposed to have occurred in four stages (Rozin et al. 1993).

2.1 Core Disgust

The initial form of disgust, that appears first in children, has to do with food, but primarily the nature and origin of the food, rather than its taste (Rozin and Fallon 1987). Core disgust has three components: (a) a sense of oral incorporation (and hence a linkage with food or eating), (b) a sense of offensiveness, and (c) contamination potency. The mouth is the principal route of entry of material things into the body; such things may be essential for life, but may also be very harmful. Disgust has to do with the harmful side, the risks of ingestion. The threat of oral incorporation is illustrated by a widespread belief that ‘You are what you eat.’

Almost all elicitors of core disgust are whole animals, or animal body parts or body products. The great majority of food taboos concern animals and their products, and in most cultures the great majority of animals as potential foods are considered disgusting.

The contamination response (e.g., the rejection of a potential food if it even briefly contacted a disgusting entity) appears to be powerful and universal among adults, and is a defining feature of disgust. It is an example of the sympathetic magical law of contagion, which essentially holds that ‘once in contact, always in contact’ (Rozin and Nemeroff 1990).

2.2 Animal Nature Disgust

Common elicitors of disgust include inappropriate sex, poor hygiene, death, and violations of the ideal body envelope (e.g., gore, deformity, obesity). Contact with death and the odor of death (decay) are potent elicitors of disgust. Individuals who score high on disgust sensitivity also score higher on a fear of death scale (Haidt et al. 1994).

The centrality of death in disgust suggests a more general construal of disgust. While Freud (1953) conceived of disgust as a defense against culturally unacceptable sexual or coprophilic urges, disgust may be better understood as a defense against a universal fear of death. Ernest Becker (1973) has argued that the most important threat to the psyche is the certainty of death. Human beings are the only organisms that know they will die. Disgust, as a withdrawal system, may help to suppress thoughts or experiences that suggest human mortality.

More generally, anything that reminds us that we are animals elicits disgust (Rozin and Fallon 1987); eating, excretion, sex, soiling of the body surface, soft viscera within the body envelope, and death are all properties that humans share with animals. Cultures typically have extensive rules about these matters, including a wide range of prohibitions, in an attempt to humanize or deny our animal bodies. People who ignore these prescriptions are reviled as disgusting and animal-like (Rozin et al. 1993, see also Miller 1997 for a related conception). This conception of disgust links it to the concern of humans, frequently cited by anthropologists, to distinguish themselves from animals.

2.3 Interpersonal And Moral Disgust

Across cultures, there is a sense of disgust at touching most people who are not intimates, of making indirect contact with them, such as by wearing their clothing. Most other persons are contaminating, in this sense, and this sensitivity can serve to reinforce social boundaries. Cultures differ in degree of this sensitivity; it is particularly high in Hindu India, where it serves as an important means of maintaining caste distinctions.

In many, if not all languages, the word for ‘disgust’ is applied to certain moral violations. And the contamination property of disgust is also extended to the perpetrators of such immoral acts. It is possible that disgust functions, along with anger and contempt, as a basic moral emotion involved in expressing moral outrage at the actions of another (Rozin et al. 1999). Richard Shweder and his colleagues (Shweder et al. 1997) identify three types of moral codes that occur in cultures around the world. Violation of the community code, having to do with issues of hierarchy and duty, may map on to the emotion of contempt. Violations of the autonomy code deal with rights and justice, and may be associated with anger. The third code, divinity, focuses on the self as a spiritual entity and seeks to protect that entity from degrading or polluting acts. Disgust may be the emotion that is evoked when the divinity code is violated (Rozin et al. 1999).

3. Development Of Disgust

Distaste, the origin of disgust, is present at birth, as in the innate rejection by neonates of bitter substances. Disgust first appears in North American children between the ages of 4 and 8 years, with the appearance of the contamination response, and rejection of foods because of their nature or origin. Disgust, as opposed to distaste, seems to be uniquely human, and is a product of culture. The contamination response, also uniquely human, is probably, in origin, a means of protection from microbial contamination; however, it is acquired. Even feces, surely a source of such contamination, and a universal disgust substance among human adults, is not rejected by infants. Toilet training may well be the first disgust-generating experience for humans, but the means by which strong negative affect becomes associated with feces is unknown, as is the way that disgust ‘spreads’ to a wider range of elicitors.

Presumably parental reactions to disgusting things play a central role in the development of disgust. There is evidence for family resemblance in disgust sensitivity.

4. Disgust, History And Culture

Across cultures and history, the expression of disgust seems to vary rather little, while the elicitors and meanings vary widely. It seems that disgust was relatively infrequent and limited to a narrow range of elicitors in medieval Europe. The full scope of disgust in Western history, and its flowering as both an emotion of sensibility to the animal nature of humans, and a marker of immorality, is presented in William Miller’s Anatomy of Disgust (Miller 1997).

Many cultures show specific attractions to entities that most other cultures find disgusting. For example, particular spoiled foods (e.g., cheese for the French, fermented fish sauce for Southeast Asians) are highly desired in particular cultures, and there are major differences in the sexual practices and contact with the dead across cultures.

The largest historical and cultural variation in disgust is probably associated with interpersonal and moral disgust. For example, disgust seems to center more on interpersonal and moral matters for Hindu Indians than it does for Americans.

5. Individual Differences

Results from a standardized test of disgust sensitivity, applied in Japan and the United States, indicate that sensitivity is somewhat higher in females and people of lesser education or lower social class (Haidt et al. 1994). As well, disgust has been implicated in two clinical phenomena: phobias and obsessive compulsive disorder.

6. Neural Correlates Of Disgust

Very recent work by Sprengelmeyer, Young, Phillips, and others, in Germany and England, has established a link between disgust and the basal ganglia; in particular, damage to the basal ganglia, as in Huntington’s disease, is associated with a sharply defined inability to recognize expressions of the emotion of disgust. These patients do not seem to have major deficits in disgust other than in the recognition of its expression.

7. Disgust And Related Emotions

Fear and disgust share a behavioral component, withdrawal based on a threat. Anger and sociomoral disgust share the appraisal of moral condemnation, and the common facial gesture of raised upper lip. Contempt shares the appraisal that someone is base and inferior to oneself, but has a complex and rich set of connotations, as described by Miller (1997). Shame has been described as disgust turned inward, a judgment that the self is disgusting. It is not clear what emotion is ‘opposite’ to disgust, but perhaps love is the closest opposite.

8. Disgust And The Arts

Disgusting images appear frequently in visual art. Disgust is also a focus of humor, at least in Western culture, and plays a particularly central role in children’s humor. Disgust appears to be attractive in situations where it is contained and not too threatening; in this regard, our enjoyment of disgust may be related to our enjoyment of horror movies, sad movies, and amusement park rides. All of these proclivities seem to be uniquely human. In general, disgust plays a major role in socialization, and the sensibilities it promotes are at the heart of what it means to be human and to be civilized.

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