Abstract
Disgust, an emotion motivating withdrawal from offensive stimuli, protects us from the risk of biological pathogens and sociomoral violations. Homogeneity of its two types, namely, core and moral disgust has been under intensive debate. To examine the dynamic relationship between them, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) for core disgust, moral disgust and neutral pictures while participants performed a modified oddball task. ERP analysis revealed that N1 and P2 amplitudes were largest for the core disgust pictures, indicating automatic processing of the core disgust-evoking pictures. N2 amplitudes were higher for pictures evoking moral disgust relative to core disgust and neutral pictures, reflecting a violation of social norms. The core disgust pictures elicited larger P3 and late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes in comparison with the moral disgust pictures which, in turn, elicited larger P3 and LPP amplitudes when compared to the neutral pictures. Taken together, these findings indicated that core and moral disgust pictures elicited different neural activities at various stages of information processing, which provided supporting evidence for the heterogeneity of disgust.
Highlights
Disgust is a basic human emotion that functions to protect us from disease [1]
Post hoc paired t tests with bonferroniholm correction revealed that reaction times (RTs) for core disgust pictures was faster than for moral disgust pictures [t(17) = −2.72, p = 0.028] and neutral pictures [t(17) = −5.22, p < 0.001]
Further paired t tests indicated that the accuracy for core disgust pictures was higher than for moral disgust pictures [t(17) = 2.72, p = 0.03] and neutral pictures [t(17) = 4.90, p < 0.001]
Summary
Disgust is a basic human emotion that functions to protect us from disease [1]. It is thought to have originated in oral rejection to toxic or unpleasant-tasting substances [2]. With the evolution of society, the core rejection impulse of disgust has expanded into the social-moral domains [3]. The disgust reaction triggered by contaminated food, body products (e.g., feces, vomit), specific animals (e.g., maggots, cockroaches), and other physical materials is referred to as core or physical disgust [4]. The disgust reaction elicited by socio-moral transgressions is referred to as moral disgust, which is crucial for maintenance of social norms [4,5,6]. There are two types of moral disgust: sexual immoral behaviors
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call