Core Disgust Research Articles

A neurofunctional signature of subjective disgust generalizes to oral distaste and socio-moral contexts.

While disgust originates in the hard-wired mammalian distaste response, the conscious experience of disgust in humans strongly depends on subjective appraisal and may even extend to socio-moral contexts. Here, in a series of studies, we combined functional magnetic resonance imaging with machine-learning-based predictive modelling to establish a comprehensive neurobiological model of subjective disgust. The developed neurofunctional signature accurately predicted momentary self-reported subjective disgust across discovery (n = 78) and pre-registered validation (n = 30) cohorts and generalized across core disgust (n = 34 and n = 26), gustatory distaste (n = 30) and socio-moral (unfair offers; n = 43) contexts. Disgust experience was encoded in distributed cortical and subcortical systems, and exhibited distinct and shared neural representations with subjective fear or negative affect in interoceptive-emotional awareness and conscious appraisal systems, while the signatures most accurately predicted the respective target experience. We provide an accurate functional magnetic resonance imaging signature for disgust with a high potential to resolve ongoing evolutionary debates.

Long-term disgust habituation with limited generalisation in care home workers.

Countless workers handle bodily effluvia and body envelope violations every working day, and consequentially face deeply unpleasant levels of disgust. Understanding if and how they adapt can help inform policies to improve worker satisfaction and reduce staff turnover. So far, limited evidence exist that self-reported disgust is reduced (or lower to begin with) among those employed in high-disgust environments. However, it is unclear if this is due to demand effects or translates into real behavioural changes. Here, we tested healthcare assistants (N = 32) employed in UK care homes and a control sample (N = 50). We replicated reduced self-reported pathogen disgust sensitivity in healthcare workers compared to controls. We also found it negatively correlated with career duration, suggesting long-term habituation. Furthermore, we found that healthcare assistants showed no behavioural disgust avoidance on a web-based preferential looking task (equivalent to eye tracking). Surprisingly, this extended to disgust elicitors found outside care homes, suggesting generalisation of disgust habituation. While we found no difference between bodily effluvia (core disgust) and body envelope violations (gore disgust), generalisation did not extend to other domains: self-reported sexual and moral disgust sensitivity were not different between healthcare assistants and the control group, nor was there a correlation with career duration. In sum, our work confirms that people in high-frequency disgust employment are less sensitive to pathogen disgust. Crucially, we provide preliminary evidence that this is due to a process of long-term habituation with generalisation to disgust-elicitors within the pathogen domain, but not beyond it.

Differential involvement of the senses in disgust memories.

One prediction derived from the disease avoidance account of disgust is that proximal disgust cues (smells, tastes and touches) should elicit this emotion more intensely than distal disgust cues (sights and sounds). If correct, then memories of disgusting experiences should involve smelling, tasting or touching to a greater degree than seeing or hearing. Two surveys were conducted on university students to test this idea, drawing upon their naturalistic experiences. Survey 1 (N = 127) asked participants to detail their most memorable disgusting, fear-provoking, morally repulsive and yucky/gross experience, with each recollection self-rated for sensory involvement. Survey 2 (N = 89) employed the same task, but this time, participants recollected their most common disgusting, fear-provoking, morally repulsive and yucky/gross experience in the preceding week. The majority of disgusting experiences were core disgusts-i.e. related to disease/pathogen presence or stimuli. The proximal and distal sensory cues contributed equally to individuals' most memorable core disgust experiences, but the proximal senses were more involved than the distal senses in individuals' most common core disgust experiences. Further, the proximal sensory cues, as compared with the distal sensory cues, were signficantly more involved in core disgust experiences than in morally repulsive and fear-provoking experiences. The implications of these findings for a disease avoidance account of disgust, for multi-sensory disgust research, and core disgust's classification as an emotion or a drive, are discussed.

Can immorality be contracted? Appraisals of moral disgust and contamination fear

While extant research underlines the role of disgust in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) with contamination fear, less research attention has been devoted to moral disgust. This study endeavored to examine the types of appraisals that are elicited by moral disgust in comparison to core disgust, and to examine their associations with both contact and mental contamination symptoms. In a within-participants design, 148 undergraduate students were exposed to core disgust, moral disgust, and anxiety control elicitors via vignettes, and provided appraisal ratings of sympathetic magic, thought-action fusion and mental contamination, as well as compulsive urges. Measures of both contact and mental contamination symptoms were administered. Mixed modeling analyses indicated that core disgust and moral disgust elicitors both provoked greater appraisals of sympathetic magic and compulsive urges than anxiety control elicitors. Further, moral disgust elicitors elicited greater thought-action fusion and mental contamination appraisals than all other elicitors. Overall, these effects were greater in those with higher contamination fear. This study demonstrates how a range of contagion beliefs are evoked by the presence of ‘moral contaminants’, and that such beliefs are positively associated with contamination concerns. These results shed light on moral disgust as an important target in the treatment of contamination fear.

Disgust and Anxiety Sensitivity as Vulnerability Factors in Misophonia

Objective: This study was aimed at exploring the association between disgust sensitivity and misophonia. We explored the mediating mechanisms underlying this relationship by specifically examining the mediating role of components of anxiety sensitivity in this association. Methods: Two hundred and thirteen individuals completed the online measures of disgust sensitivity, anxiety sensitivity and misophonia. Results: The results indicated that core disgust was significantly and positively associated with misophonic distress and aggressive behavioral reactions to triggers of misophonia but failed to correlate with nonaggressive reactions to the distress elicitors. Furthermore, the social concerns component of anxiety sensitivity partly mediated the association between core disgust and misophonic distress and the cognitive concerns component of anxiety sensitivity served as a mediator in the relationship of core disgust and aggressive behavioral reactions to misophonic distress elicitors. Direct effects of core disgust on misophonic distress were also found. Conclusions: Results highlight the significance of identifying the mechanisms that underlie the mediated paths between core disgust and emotional-behavioral features of misophonia. Findings point to a distinction between misophonia and obsessive compulsive and related disorders. Theoretical implications involving ‘not just right experiences’, sociomoral disgust and mental contamination are discussed.

A Theoretical Proposal for a Perceptually Driven, Food-Based Disgust that Can Influence Food Acceptance During Early Childhood

Disgust, the “revulsion at the prospect of (oral) incorporation of an offensive substance”, is not thought to influence the acceptability of food during infancy and early childhood. This is because the feelings of disgust require a person to have developed an understanding of contagion and to be aware of the nature and origin of a given disgust stimulus, which does not occur until around seven years of age. Despite this need for higher cognitive functioning, studies have demonstrated the potential for disgust in children as young as two years of age. Furthermore, it seems that young children can demonstrate aspects of disgust without having the cognitive understanding of contagion. This review is the first paper to demonstrate how core disgust may influence the acceptability of foods from late infancy. Firstly, food neophobia may act as a catalyst for disgust. Secondly, that disgust in young children can result from the visual perceptual features of food (as opposed to a cognitive response based on non-food disgust stimuli). Thirdly, that some disliked foods have contaminating properties, much like non-food, adult disgust stimuli (e.g. insects). Fourthly, that the response reduces as the child ages and learns more about food and its variability between presentations. Finally, individual differences exist to explain why an individual child may be more or less likely to respond to a given food with a disgust response. This proposal adds to the current debate relating to the motivations of ‘picky’ eating during early childhood and introduces an alternative to the proposal that these behaviours are the result of a child’s desire for autonomy.

Disease-related disgust promotes antibody release in human saliva

The behavioral immune system (BIS) comprises manifold mechanisms, that may assist the physiological immune system (PIS) in counteracting infection and can even reduce the risk of contagion. Previous studies have found initial evidence for possible interactions between the two systems. However, most of these findings were correlative and have not been replicated. Further, none of these studies examined whether disease stimuli that indicate an enhanced airborne transmission risk may trigger a different immune response in comparison to stimuli that predominantly evoke core disgust. In the present study, we employed a video-priming approach to get further insight in the influence of the perception of disgust- and disease-related stimuli on the rapid physiological immune response, as indicated by changes of secretory immunoglobulin A (S-IgA) in saliva. We created three video primers that represented different categories of disgust- and/or disease-associated content. Two of the videos showed disease-related situations that were associated with contagious respiratory virus infections, varying in concealment of aerosols. The third video incurred no heightened airborne contagion risk, but comprised situations that are known to elicit core disgust, such as rotten foods, decaying animal carcasses, or cockroaches. A fourth video acted as control showing landscape impressions. The different video primers varied in their contagion risk and disgust-evoking potential. Given the role of S-IgA in the mucosal immune defense, we expected differences in the S-IgA response between the two videos indicating a heightened airborne contagion risk and the core disgust video, with the highest S-IgA to occur after the aerosol video. For this, we used the data of 107 healthy participants in a between-subjects design with the four video primers. We found a significant increase of S-IgA in response to both the disease- and the disgust-related videos, which correlated positively with the perceived contagion risk of the displayed situations. Nevertheless, there was no significant difference in the increase between the three disease- and disgust-related videos. We also found that people with a high contamination disgust produced less S-IgA in such situations, which is a hint for a compensating relationship between the BIS and PIS. Our observations suggest that the mere visual perception of videos showing realistic situations of an increased contagion risk can elicit a heightened release of salivary antibodies.

Effects of Core Disgust and Moral Disgust on Moral Judgment: An Event-Related Potential Study.

Core disgust is elicited by physical or chemical stimuli, while moral disgust is evoked by abstract violations of moral norms. Although previous studies have pointed out these two types of disgust can affect behavior and spatial dimensions of moral judgment, less is known about how moral and core disgust affect the temporal neural processing of moral judgment. In addition, whether moral and core disgust are only related to purity-based moral judgment or all kinds of moral judgment is still controversial. This study aimed to explore how core and moral disgust affect the neural processing of purity-based moral judgment by using affective priming and moral judgment tasks. The behavioral results showed that the severity of moral violation of non-purity ones is higher than purity ones. The event-related potentials (ERP) results mainly revealed that earlier P2 and N2 components, which represent the automatic moral processes, can differentiate neutral and two types of disgust rather than differentiating moral domain, while the later N450, frontal, and parietal LPP components, which represent the conflict detection and, later, cognitive processing can differentiate the purity and non-purity ones rather than differentiating priming type. Moreover, core and moral disgust priming mainly differed in the purity-based moral processing indexed by parietal LPP. Our findings confirmed that the disgusting effect on moral judgments can be explained within the framework of dual-process and social intuitionist models, suggesting that emotions, including core and moral disgust, played an essential role in the automatic intuition process. The later parietal LPP results strongly supported that core disgust only affected the purity-based moral judgment, fitting the primary purity hypothesis well. We show how these theories can provide novel insights into the temporal mechanisms of moral judgment.

Disgust sensitivity is negatively associated with immune system activity in early pregnancy: Direct support for the Compensatory Prophylaxis Hypothesis

According to the Compensatory Prophylaxis Hypothesis (CPH), disgust may be considered a part of the behavioral immune system, adjusting as a function of immunocompetence. Early pregnancy involves modulation of a complex network of various immune-related factors, but only a few studies so far have focused on disgust sensitivity in pregnant women in the context of the CPH. This study aimed to examine associations between disgust sensitivity and immune activity indices, cytokine levels, and white blood cell (WBC) count in pregnant women. The sample included 78 women in the 1st trimester of pregnancy. Higher disgust sensitivity (Disgust Scale-Revised; DS-R) was significantly associated with decreased levels of IL-1β, IL-2 IL-4, IL-7, IL-17, Eotaxin, MCP-1 (MCAF), and RANTES in blood serum. This model explained 17.5% of the total DS-R score variability. Using the DS-R subscales, the Contamination disgust was significantly associated with levels of FGF basic, IFN-γ, IL-1β, IL-2, IL-4, IL-7, IL-17A, G-CSF, MCP-1 (MCAF), MIP-1α, PDGF-BB, and RANTES, and the Core disgust was significantly associated with levels of IL-1β, IL-2, IL-4, IL-7, IL-17A, Eotaxin, G-CSF, IP-10, MCP-1 (MCAF), PDGF-BB, and TNF-α. Disgust sensitivity was not associated with WBC count. Disgust may reflect and compensate for insufficient immune adaptation in early pregnancy, suggesting the potential clinical significance of this common prenatal symptom.

Age-related differences in self-reported disgust towardcore disgust, sex-related, and food stimuli.

While disgust is functional in preventing contagion from pathogens, it also plays a role in various psychopathologies. Disgust responses towarddirt, bodily secretions, certain types of food, and sexual stimuli typically emerge during (early) childhood. However, there is a lack of research on how disgust develops. This cross-sectional study investigated whether there are age-related differences in subjective, self-reported disgust between early and late adolescenceand whether there are differences for distinctive types of disgust (core-disgust, sex-related, food-related). Using an online survey, 240 Dutch children (116 female, 124 male) aged 9 through 16 years rated the extent to which they found the different types of stimuli disgusting or not on a VAS scale. The results showed that only the disgust responses to sex-related stimuli decreased with age, whereas disgust towardthe other categories did not show any age-related differences. Overall girls reported somewhat higher disgust ratings than boys for sex-related stimuli, but not for the other categories. The present study offers important new angles for future research, which might further disentangle the mechanisms through which the changes occur.

The transdiagnostic nature of disgust propensity: An examination of its associations with anxiety and obsessive compulsive-related disorder symptoms

Significant research highlights the role of disgust propensity in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and other anxiety-based diagnoses and suggests that heightened disgust propensity may be a transdiagnostic risk factor for these disorders. However, OCD was reclassified from an anxiety to an obsessive-compulsive and related disorder (OCRD), due in part to OCD being associated with a range of non-anxiety affective experiences, including disgust. A fair amount of work has examined the relationship between disgust, OCD, and anxiety disorders; less information is available on its relation to the OCRDs. The present study examined associations between specific domains of disgust propensity and self-reported symptoms of several anxiety disorders, OCD, body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), and hoarding in two non-clinical samples. Results showed that specific phobia, OCD, and BDD symptoms were consistently and strongly correlated with disgust domains. Results of multivariate regression analyses indicated replicable relationships between animal-reminder disgust and specific phobia symptoms, core disgust and animal phobia symptoms, and contamination disgust and cleaning symptoms, controlling for negative affect, anxiety sensitivity, and experiential avoidance. Results were inconsistent for panic, BDD, and hoarding symptoms. These results partially support the argument that the OCRDs are more distinct than similar and that OCD and some anxiety disorders are defined by common psychological processes.

The relationship between disgust sensitivity and BMI: Is the food disgusting or am I?

Core disgust is a negative emotion, comprised of disgust in response to food, animals, and from the body itself (and its products). Individual differences exist in the level to which people experience the emotion of core disgust. Sensitivity to disgust has been associated negatively with Body Mass Index (BMI) in overweight and obese people, and to eating disorders independently from BMI. This study investigates the relationship between disgust sensitivity and BMI by examining data from the Italian Taste Project (n = 2317). We hypothesized that the relationship between disgust sensitivity and BMI, after accounting for age and gender, may be mediated by other factors, such as 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP) sensitivity or eating restraint, and that this relationship might differ in non-obese and obese individuals. Results showed that the relationship between sensitivity to disgust and food behaviors is complex and differs between obese and non-obese people. Two mediation models were considered. In the first case restrained eating acted as a mediator of disgust sensitivity in the prediction of BMI, while in the second one BMI acted only as a partial mediator of disgust sensitivity in the prediction of restrained eating. This suggests that heightened sensitivity to core disgust may be associated with a heightened sensitivity to self-disgust, motivating restrained eating behaviors when BMI is higher, but only in non-obese individuals.

The level of construal involved in the elicitation of core versus moral disgust.

Previous research has distinguished between core disgust, elicited by revolting physical objects like spoiled food, and sociomoral disgust, elicited by violations of social norms or moral principles. We suggest that different levels of construal are involved in the elicitation of core disgust and moral disgust. Specifically, we predicted that the elicitation of core disgust involves more concrete than abstract construal, while the elicitation of moral disgust involves more abstract than concrete construal. On that basis, we examined whether changing the level at which the eliciting situation is construed has a different effect on the intensity of core disgust and moral disgust. In Experiment 1, we found that core disgust is associated more with concreteness than abstractness, whereas moral disgust is associated more with abstractness than concreteness. Next, we found that scenarios (Experiment 2) and images (Experiment 3) that elicit core disgust are construed more concretely and less abstractly, while scenarios and images that elicit moral disgust are construed more abstractly and less concretely. In the 2 final experiments we manipulated construal level and found that the elicitation of core disgust depends on concrete construal more than the elicitation of moral disgust (Experiment 4), while the elicitation of moral disgust depends on abstract construal more than the elicitation of core disgust (Experiment 5). These findings suggest that because core disgust and moral disgust differ in the construal level of their elicitors, changing the level at which the eliciting object is construed differently affects the intensity of core disgust and moral disgust. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Disgust Sensitivity.

There have been few tests of whether exposure to naturalistic or experimental disease-threat inductions alter disgust sensitivity, although it has been hypothesized that this should occur as part of disgust’s disease avoidance function. In the current study, we asked Macquarie university students to complete measures of disgust sensitivity, perceived vulnerability to disease (PVD), hand hygiene behavior and impulsivity, during Australia’s Covid-19 pandemic self-quarantine (lockdown) period, in March/April 2020. These data were then compared to earlier Macquarie university, and other local, and overseas student cohorts, to determine if disgust sensitivity and the other measures, were different in the lockdown sample. The most consistent finding in the lockdown sample was of higher core disgust sensitivity (Cohen’s d = 0.4), with some evidence of greater germ aversion on the PVD, and an increase in hand and food-related hygiene, but with little change in impulsivity. The consistency with which greater core disgust sensitivity was observed, suggests exposure to a highly naturalistic disease threat is a plausible cause. Greater disgust sensitivity may have several functional benefits (e.g., hand and food-related hygiene) and may arise implicitly from the threat posed by the Covid-19 pandemic.

A Causal Role for Gastric Rhythm in Human Disgust Avoidance

SummaryRotten food, maggots, bodily waste—all elicit disgust in humans. Disgust promotes survival by encouraging avoidance of disease vectors1 but is also implicated in prejudice toward minority groups; avoidance of environmentally beneficial foods, such as insect protein; and maladaptive avoidance behavior in neuropsychiatric conditions.2, 3, 4, 5 Unlike fear, pathological disgust is not improved substantially by exposure therapy clinically,6 nor in experimental work does behavioral avoidance of disgusting images habituate following prolonged exposure.7,8 Under normal physiological conditions, perception of disgusting stimuli disrupts myoelectrical rhythms in the stomach,9, 10, 11, 12, 13 inducing gastric dysrhythmias that correlate with neural signatures of disgust.11 However, the causal role of gastric rhythm in disgust avoidance is unknown. We manipulated gastric rhythm using domperidone, a peripheral dopamine D2/D3 antagonist and common anti-emetic, at a dose (10 mg) that acts to convert gastric dysrhythmias to normal rhythms.9 In a preregistered, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover design in 25 healthy volunteers (aged 18–25), we measured the effects of domperidone on core disgust avoidance, using eye tracking to measure implicit (oculomotor) avoidance of disgusting images (feces) before and after an “exposure” intervention (monetary reinforcement for looking at disgusting images).7,8 We find that domperidone significantly reduces oculomotor disgust avoidance following incentivized exposure. This suggests that domperidone may weaken the “immunity” of disgust to habituation, putatively by reducing gastric dysrhythmias during incentivized engagement with disgusting stimuli. This indicates a causal role for disgust-related visceral changes in disgust avoidance, supporting the hypothesis that physiological homeostasis contributes to emotional experience.

The Emotion of Disgust among Medical and Psychology Students.

The emotion of disgust evolved as a way to protect oneself from illness and is associated with aspects of disease avoidance. Disgust Scale–Revised (DS-R) (Olatunji et al., 2008) measures the disgust propensity of three kinds of disgust (core, animal reminder, contamination). Contextual factors, such as academic background, might influence DS-R scoring, especially among medical students, where the notion of disease is central. We examined DS-R scoring and the choice of postgraduate studies in medical (n = 94) and psychology (n = 97) students. In an anonymous web-based survey, participants completed the DS-R and a questionnaire including plans for postgraduate studies. Females outnumbered males and scored higher in total DS-R score (p = 0.003). Psychology students scored higher in all three kinds of disgust (p < 0.001 for core disgust and animal reminder, p = 0.069 for contamination disgust), indicating a higher level of disease avoidance. Medical students willing to follow Internal Medicine scored higher in core disgust (p < 0.05), while psychology students willing to study Experimental Psychology scored lower in the animal reminder subscale (p = 0.019 and p < 0.001 for the association between these subscales and the orientation of Medical and Psychology Students, respectively). In conclusion, disgust propensity as rated by DS-R is related to academic background and orientation preferences in postgraduate studies.

The Mediational Roles of Law of Contagion and Threat Estimations in the Relation Between Disgust and Contamination-based OCD Symptoms

Objectives: The law of contagion is one of the sympathetic of magic principles and is a cognitive distortion related to disgust. To explain how disgust can lead to contamination Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) symptoms, this study assumes that the emotion of disgust can activate the law of contagion, which in turn may motivate threat estimations that finally results in OCD symptoms. Methods: This study has a correlational research design. Participants were 495 students (59% women) from Olum Tahghighat University that recruited through convenience sampling. All the participants completed all the questionnaires in the same order: Threat estimation scenarios, the Vancouver Obsessional Compulsive Inventory Contamination Scale (VOCI-C), negative-spiritual contagion subscale from Contagion Sensitivity Scale (CSS), and core disgust subscale from Disgust Scale (DS). This model was examined through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Results: The finding revealed that the proposed model had a good fit based on reported indices: χ2, CMIN/DF, GFI, CFI, AGFI, RMSEA. Conclusion: There are mediational roles for the law of contagion and threat estimations in the relation between disgust and OCD symptoms. The proposed psychopathological model can help to promote the disgust theory in OCD and may have implications for cognitive behavioral therapy.

Cognitive and personality correlates of trait disgust and their relationship to condemnation of nonpurity moral transgressions.

Past research has found that individuals who are more sensitive to physically disgusting stimuli also condemn moral transgressions more harshly. However, there is debate about whether this condemnation includes transgressions that do not involve impure behaviors. We present a meta-analysis of 6 studies (N = 1082) which suggests that trait disgust is associated with condemnation of nonpurity transgressions. This relationship was primarily explained by sensitivity toward the very core disgust stimuli that those transgressions lack. We next tested whether this relationship might be mediated by a third variable. We found that trait core disgust was associated with higher orderliness, lower deviance sensitivity, and preference for intuitive thinking; these variables also correlated with moral condemnation. Trait disgust was also associated with lower generalized social trust, but trust was not correlated with moral condemnation. Neither trait disgust nor moral condemnation were associated with ethnocentrism. Further, none of these variables mediated the relationship between trait disgust and condemnation. Taken together, our results support a role for trait disgust in moral judgments outside of the purity domain, but leave unexplained its association with condemnation of nonpurity transgressions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Disgust Proneness and Personal Space in Children.

Individuals vary in their personal space (PS) size as reflected by the preferred distance to another person during social interactions. A previous study with adults showed that pathogen-relevant disgust proneness (DP) predicted PS magnitude. The present study investigated whether this association between DP and PS already exists in 8- to 12-year-old children (144 girls, 101 boys). The children answered a disgust questionnaire with the two trait dimensions "core disgust (contact with spoiled food and poor hygiene) and "death-relevant disgust" (imagined contact with dead and dying organisms). PS magnitude was assessed with a paper-pencil measure (drawing a PS bubble; Experiment 1) or with the stop-distance task (preferred distance to an approaching woman or man; Experiment 2). In both experiments, only death-related disgust predicted PS magnitude and only if the approaching person was male. The current study questions the relevance of pathogen-related disgust in children for regulating interpersonal distance.

Disgust and the sacred: Do people react to violations of the sacred with the same emotion they react to something putrid?

Disgust has been hypothesized to be uniquely linked to violations of a distinct moral domain (called divinity, purity, or sacred) aimed at preserving one's body from contamination with pathogens and preserving one's soul from violations of what is sacred. Here we examined whether the same emotion-core disgust-occurs when witnessing both types of violation, and we proposed a specific method for doing so. In two studies (N = 160; 240), American and Indian participants indicated their emotional reaction to (stories depicting) sacred or nonsacred violations, each either with or without pathogens. Both Americans and Indians felt "grossed out" (a term for core disgust) by events with pathogens (whether violations of the sacred or not). They felt disgusted and angered, but not grossed out, by violations of the sacred. For both Americans and Indians, grossed out was never the modal emotion when a sacred violation did not involve pathogens. Results were inconsistent with a focus on any single emotion: sacred violations were associated with several different negative emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).