Additional evidence for the relationship between mating strategy and disgust in a non-student sample

Abstract

Relatively recently, human mating strategies were found to be associated with the emotion of disgust. Specifically, preference for short-term mating was associated with lower levels of sexual, but not pathogen or moral disgust. It has been suggested that successful short-term mating includes a key component, namely suppressed sexual disgust. In addition, men's attractiveness was found to have an indirect effect on the level of sexual disgust via short-term mating. However, some inconsistent findings cast doubt on the proposed mechanism by which short-term mating tendencies calibrate disgust sensitivity. This highlights the importance of further replication studies in different cultures and populations to validate the use of the proposed cognitive adaptation in explaining observed relationships. Therefore, we sought to replicate the original findings in a non-student sample from Croatia consisting of 407 heterosexual adults. In general, we successfully replicated the original findings by showing large, direct, and negative effects of short-term mating strategies on sexual disgust. However, direct or indirect effects of self-perceived attractiveness on disgust have not been found. In summary, the current results provide additional evidence for the relationship between mating strategy and specifically sexual disgust.