1. “Ultimately, the basis for all disgust is us ― that we live and die and that the process is a messy one emitting substances and odors that make us doubt ourselves and fear our neighbors.”
(Miller, 1997, p. xiv)
Disgust

2. 0 = something you would not like 50 = neutral 100 = something you would like
How would you feel about wearing a sweater that was…
…brand new?
…worn by a perfectly healthy stranger?
…worn by someone diagnosed with leukemia?
…worn by someone who lost his/her leg in a car accident?
…worn by someone who was convicted of murder?

3. Elicitors: What causes disgust?

4. For North Americans… Elicitors of Disgust
Food
Body products
Animals
Sexual behaviors
Contact with death or corpses
Violations of exterior envelope of the body (including gore and deformity)
Poor hygiene
Interpersonal Contamination (contact w/ unsavory human beings)
Moral offenses
(Haidt, Rozin, & colleagues, 1993, 1994, 1997)

5. Definition of Disgust
Focus on mouth, real/imagined ingestion, or oral rejection of aversive stimulus (Ekman & Friesen, 1975)
Avoidance of stimuli
High in infection potential (Curtis et al., 2004)
Oral toxins and parasites (Kelly, 2007)
Probably began as a rejection response to guard body from harmful food
As human societies developed, definition expanded to a rejection response that guards humans from a variety of dangers
Harm for body + Harm for Soul (e.g., morality, social order)

6. Disgust Components Physiological Arousal? Subjective Feelings?
Cognitive Appraisals?
Behavior Change?

7. Disgust 4 Components Physiology:
PNS Activation – ↓HR, ↓BP, nausea, gagging, passing out
SNS Activation - ↑SCR, ↑HR, ↑BP
May depend on situation – threat vs. consumption
Brain Areas: insula, basal ganglia, parts of prefrontal cortex
Subjective Feelings: Repulsion, Drop in arousal
Appraisals
It’s contaminated! It has a disease!
It reminds me of an animal!
I’m feeling lightheaded!

8. (Scherer, 1997)

9. Disgust 4 Components Physiology:
PNS Activation – ↓HR, ↓BP, nausea, gagging, passing out
SNS Activation - ↑SCR, ↑HR, ↑BP
May depend on situation – threat vs. consumption
Brain Areas: insula, basal ganglia, parts of prefrontal cortex
Subjective Feelings: Repulsion, Drop in arousal
Appraisals
It’s contaminated! It has a disease!
It reminds me of an animal!
I’m feeling lightheaded!
Behavior: Rejection, Avoidance, and Facial Expressions

10. RETRACTION OF UPPER LIP
Expressive Component
NOSE WRINKLE
RETRACTION OF UPPER LIP
GAPE

11. 4 Types of Disgust
Core
Animal-Nature
Interpersonal
Moral

12. Core Disgust Oral defense related to food contamination
Not just a bad taste
Not just danger to the body (i.e., fear)
Distasteful PLUS Dangerous
Universal across cultures
3 Appraisals Required: Oral Incorporation, Offensiveness, and Contamination

13. Core Disgust: Oral Incorporation into the Self
Strongest aversion is to an offensive entity in mouth
Appraisal - You are what you eat
Believe that we take on the physical and moral properties of the thing that we eat

14. Core Disgust: Offensiveness
All animals and their waste products as potential foods
All cultures eat a small subset of animal foods
In many cultures, we disguise our food
Many cultures share same food taboos

15. Core Disgust: Offensiveness
Animals and the waste products of all animals as potential food
Universal- All cultures eat a small subset of animal foods
Many cultures share same food taboos
In many cultures, we disguise our food

16. Core Disgust: Contamination
Universal Contamination Response
Adaptation for disease avoidance
Law of Contagion –
once in contact, always in contact
Kelly’s
Law of Similarity – the image equals the object

17. 4 Types of Disgust
Core
Animal-Nature
Interpersonal
Moral

18. Animal-Nature Disgust
List most disgusting things
25% classified as core disgust
75% classified into 4 additional domains:
Inappropriate sexual acts
Poor hygiene
Death (Terror Management Theory; Greenberg et al., 1986)
Imagining death → Disgust
Disgust → Thoughts about death
Envelope Violations (e.g., gore, deformity, obesity)
(Haidt, Rozin, & colleagues, 1997)

19. Animal-Nature Disgust
Disgust Elicitor: anything that reminds us that we are animals
Inappropriate sexual acts – veneral disease
Poor hygiene – skin to skin, hair to hair
Death (Terror Management Theory)
Envelope Violations
Fragile body envelopes display our commonality with animals

20. 4 Types of Disgust
Core
Animal-Nature
Interpersonal
Moral

21. 0 = something you would not like 50 = neutral 100 = something you would like
How would you feel about wearing a sweater that was…
…brand new?
…worn by a perfectly healthy stranger?
…worn by someone diagnosed with leukemia?
…worn by someone who lost his/her leg in a car accident?
…worn by someone who was convicted of murder?

22. Interpersonal Disgust
Disgust Elicitor: Other people, who are containers of waste products
Adaptation discourages contact with strangers
Strangeness (e.g., worn bowling shoes)
Misfortune (e.g., amputated leg)
Disease (e.g., tuberculosis, ebola)
Moral Taint (e.g., conviction for murder)
(Rozin et al., 1989, 1994)

23. CORE ANIMAL-NATURE INTERPERSONAL Silence of the Lambs Giada Outbreak
Hangover

24. Disgust Sensitivity Disgust Scale (DS; Haidt et al., 1994)
Food Products
Animal Products
Body Products
Core Elicitors
Inappropriate sexuality
Envelope Violations
Death
Animal-Nature Elicitors
Human-human contact
Interpersonal Elicitors

25. Core? Animal-Nature? Interpersonal?
You see a man with his intestines exposed after an accident.
You are walking barefoot on concrete and step on a worm.
You hear about a 30-year old man who seeks sexual relationships with 80-year old women.
You accidentally touch the ashes of a person who has been cremated.
If I see someone vomit, it makes me sick to my stomach.
You see someone put ketchup on vanilla ice cream and eat it.
I never let any part of my body touch toilet seats in public restrooms.

26. Disgust Sensitivity Are you willing to touch it?’’
(88%)
‘‘Are you willing to pick it up in your hand?’’
(82%)
‘‘Are you willing to touch it to your lip?’’
(64%)
‘‘Are you willing to take a bite?’’
(57%)
(Rozin et al., 1999)

27. Disgust Sensitivity Participants engaged in 26 disgust-related tasks
Disgust Behavior Measure: average performance on disgust related tasks
High = high willingness to engage in disgust-related behaviors
Low = low willingness to engage in disgust-related behaviors
Disgust Scale (Haidt et al., 1994)
High = High likeliness to experience disgust
Low = Low likeliness to experience disgust
(Rozin et al., 1999)

28. Disgust Behavior
Average 26 Behaviors
Disgust Scale
Mucous
.76*
-.26
Grasshopper
.70*
-.46*
Dogfudge
.69*
-.31*
Mealworm
.68*
-.39*
Ketchup on cracker
.67*
-.08
Condom
.63*
-.17
Ashes
.57*
-.33*
Wormpop
-.11
Cockroach
.56*
-.43*
Pighead
.53*
Bedpan
.49*
Monkeyfilm
.47*
-.29*
Tampon
.46*
-.15
Surgeryfilm
.29*
-.30*
Grassjelly
.26*
-.06
Snake
.24
Average 26 Disgust Behaviors
-.41*

29. Disgust Sensitivity Disgust Scale (DS; Haidt et al., 1994)
Predicts disgust-relevant behavior
When looking at disgusting photos, disgusting facial expressions, and inhaling bad odors, higher scores linked to
greater insular cortex activation
Greater SCR
Lower HR
Associated with clinical disorders
Core and interpersonal predict contamination aspects of OCD
Animal-reminder predicts blood-injection-injury fears
[Wicker, B., et al. (2003). Both of us disgusted in my insula: The common neural basis of seeing and feeling disgust. Neuron, 40, doi: /S (03) ]

30. Who has greater disgust sensitivity?
Women or men?
Older or Younger?
High or low socioeconomic status?
More or less education?
Psychopathy or no psychopathy?

31. 4 Types of Disgust
Core
Animal-Nature
Interpersonal
Moral

32. Moral Disgust Disgust Elicitor: Moral violation
Elicitors Vary by Culture
North Americans – violations of individual (betrayal, hypocrisy)
Japanese – violations of social order (ostracism, being ignored)

33. Is moral disgust an emotion? Evidence to Support
Cross-cultural similarity in words that describe both core and moral disgust
English – disgusted
French – dégoût
German – Ekel
Hebrew – go-al
Japanese – ken-o
Chinese – aw-shin
(Haidt et al., 1997)

34. Is moral disgust an emotion? Evidence to Support
Cross-cultural similarity in words that describe both core and moral disgust
Insula cortex is activated for both moral, core, and animal- nature disgust
Physiology for moral disgust parallels physiology for core disgust, not anger
(Sherman et al., 2007)

35. Is moral disgust an emotion? Evidence Against
“Grossed Out” → Core Disgust
“Disgusted” → Disgust and Anger
Lay word = Disgust + Anger
Disgust scale elicitors weakly correlated with moral disgust elicitors
(Nabi, 2002; Haidt et al., 1999)

36. CAD Triad Hypothesis Community / Contempt Divinity / Disgust
Violations of communal codes
Violations of individual rights
Community / Contempt
Divinity / Disgust
Autonomy / Anger
Violations of purity and sanctity
[Rozin, P., Lowery, L., Imada, S., & Haidt, J. (1999). The CAD Triad Hypothesis: A mapping between three moral emotions (contempt, anger, disgust) and three moral codes (community, autonomy, divinity). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, doi: / ]

37. Evidence for CAD Hypothesis
US and Japanese Students read scenarios that included 1 of the 3 violations
Community: A person is seeing someone burn the American [Japanese] flag
Autonomy: Someone is edging ahead of a person in a long line
Divinity: A person is touching a corpse
To each scenario, assigned
1 of 6 facial expressions – anger, contempt, disgust
1 of 3 emotion labels – anger, contempt, disgust
[Rozin, P., Lowery, L., Imada, S., & Haidt, J. (1999). The CAD Triad Hypothesis: A mapping between three moral emotions (contempt, anger, disgust) and three moral codes (community, autonomy, divinity). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, doi: / ]

38. [Rozin, P. , Lowery, L. , Imada, S. , & Haidt, J. (1999)
[Rozin, P., Lowery, L., Imada, S., & Haidt, J. (1999). The CAD Triad Hypothesis: A mapping between three moral emotions (contempt, anger, disgust) and three moral codes (community, autonomy, divinity). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76, doi: / ]