Attention bias for disgust

Abstract

Disgust was originally theorized as a defense against the oral incorporation of offensive objects. Recent research suggests disgust serves as a defense against a wider range of objects and situations in the environment, and may contribute to phobic avoidance. As such, disgust sensitivity was explored for attention and memory biases. Using a sample of 60 undergraduates, an attention bias towards disgust words on a Stroop Color-naming Task was found across all subjects following an emotional priming task. When participants were primed with disgust stories, disgust sensitivity was positively related to latencies on disgust words on a Stroop Color-naming Task, while unrelated in the other groups (fear or neutral primed). Similarly, those same participants demonstrated a positive correlation between their disgust sensitivity and the number of disgust words recalled following the Stroop Task. This, along with the findings of relationships between disgust sensitivity and contamination fears related to obsessive–compulsiveness and eating related symptomatology call for further empirical investigation into the role that disgust plays in psychopathology.