Abstract
The emotion of disgust, with feelings of revulsion and behavioral withdrawal, make it a prime emotion to aid in the avoidance of sources of contamination, including sources of potential infectious disease. We tested the theory that living in a region with a historically high prevalence of infectious diseases would promote higher levels of disgust and contamination sensitivity as a protective measure. A sample of undergraduates from Ghana (n = 103, 57 women), a country with a historically high prevalence of infectious diseases, showed significantly higher scores on scales assessing disgust, contamination, and disease susceptibility than a sample of undergraduates from the United States (n = 96, 58 women), a country with lower levels of disease threat. Contamination sensitivity mediated the national differences in disgust. Disgust connoting contamination also produced larger cross-national effect sizes than other types of disgust. Finally, a factor analysis on the Ghanaian responses to one of the disgust scales did not resemble the usual three-factor solution found in West. Taken together, the results were consistent with the hypothesis that a region with a higher prevalence of infectious disease threats would produce greater sensitivity to disgust and contamination than seen in lower disease threat regions. This first study on disgust in Africa showed that disgust sensitivity could differ considerably from that in the West.
Highlights
Disgust is considered a “basic” emotion, with demonstrated evidence for universality in disgust-associated physiology, expressions, and antecedents (Ekman, 1992; Rozin et al, 2008)
Both of these variables correlated with disgust and contamination scores: highest significant r-value for religiosity was with mean Disgust Scale Revised (DS-R), r(196) = 0.142, p = 0.046; highest significant r-value for age differences was with mean DS-R, r(189) = 0.162, p = 0.025
The results of the present study support the claim that people living in an environment in which there has been threatening levels of infectious diseases would be expected to be more sensitive to disgust-evoking situations, especially situations that connote contamination (Schaller, 2011)
Summary
Disgust is considered a “basic” emotion, with demonstrated evidence for universality in disgust-associated physiology, expressions, and antecedents (Ekman, 1992; Rozin et al, 2008). While the experience of disgust is likely found worldwide, what is considered disgust-evoking are in some cases universal (e.g., feces, incest) and other cases culture-specific (e.g., eating insects or blood). From the first modern studies of disgust, contamination themes have been central (Rozin and Fallon, 1987). Davey (1994) and Matchett and Davey (1991) made the early argument that disgust of certain animals could best be explained by a disease avoidance function of disgust. Oaten et al (2009) make the extensive argument that a disease avoidance function for disgust fits with most of the types of elicitors of disgust, not just certain animals
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