Far from disgusted: The relationships between disgust sensitivity, dark personality traits, and biological sex

Abstract

Disgust is an avoidant emotion which repulses from potentially dangerous stimuli and situations. Operating in a social context, disgust may prevent from engaging in an unrestricted sociosexuality and from violating moral norms. Meanwhile, people high in dark personality traits prefer short-term mating strategy and exhibit a tendency to transgress moral standards. Thus, it might be assumed that they should have decreased both moral and sexual disgust. In a preregistered study (N = 450; 52 % female) we tested our assumptions by examining the relationships between Dark Triad, vulnerable narcissism, and disgust sensitivity in moral and sexual domains. We also asked whether higher psychopathy and Machiavellianism in men would explain sex discrepancy in sexual disgust sensitivity. The results confirmed most of our hypotheses and showed that a) sexual and moral disgust are consistently, negatively correlated with all Dark Triad traits; b) there are considerable sex differences in sexual disgust and psychopathy; and c) increased psychopathy in men partially explains their lower sexual disgust sensitivity comparing to women. This study has taken a novel perspective in this research area, and may indicate the role of decreased disgust sensitivity in transgressing social norms by individuals high in dark personality traits.