Emotions Disgust Research Articles

Customer harassment against LGBTQ workers: highlighting its uniqueness as a group-based customer harassment

PurposeThe authors aimed to identify the nature of customer harassment against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) workers.Design/methodology/approachThe authors analyzed data from in-depth interviews with 30 LGBTQ service workers in the United States who had recently experienced customer harassment.FindingsAmong various forms of customer harassment LGBTQ workers reported, some showed commonalities with previously reported cases of race-based and gender-based customer harassment. However, other cases highlighted unique aspects of LGBTQ-based customer harassment—customers morally condemned their LGBTQ identities, refused their service while displaying emotional disgust, and made sexual advances while imposing sexual stereotypes and fantasies about LGBTQ people. Experiences of customer harassment varied across subgroups of workers who had specific sexual and gender identities, and LGBTQ workers of color were harassed for their LGBTQ and racial identities simultaneously.Originality/valuePast research on group-based customer harassment has focused on incidents against straight, cisgender women and workers of workers of color, but the present study identified the nature of customer harassment that targeted workers' LGBTQ status.

Experience of Disgust and Symptom Severity in Contamination Subtype of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: Role of Experiential Avoidance.

The emotion of disgust has been linked with the underlying nature of the contamination subtype of obsessive-compulsive disorder (C-OCD). Prior studies show that disgust contributes to the development of C-OCD by reinforcing avoidance strategies. Therefore, experiential avoidance (EA) may influence the effect between disgust sensitivity (DS) and C-OCD symptom severity. This study aimed to investigate the mediational role of EA between DS and C-OCD severity. A cross-sectional design was adopted with 45 patients of OCD and 45 healthy controls. Both the groups were assessed on the Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory, the Disgust Scale (Revised), and Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II. Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) checklist and symptom severity scale were additionally administered to the patients with OCD. Independent t-tests, Pearson's product-moment correlation, regression analysis, and mediation analysis were used. DS and EA were positively associated with contamination-washing symptoms and symptom severity. Regression analysis indicated that DS and EA were highly associated with contamination/washing severity scores among both the patients with C-OCD and the healthy controls. The study implicates that disgust is a central emotion underlying the presentation of obsessions and compulsions, which are of contamination concerns. Further, EA has a role in the maintenance of OCD through avoidance learning; however, it may not be interacting with DS to cause OCD.

Disgust for the sexual: the emotional side of obscenity law in India

ABSTRACT This article traces the judicial discourse in obscenity cases in (colonial and postcolonial) India (1860–2015). I demonstrate that law emerges as an affective site that mobilises the emotions of disgust (towards sex) and fear (of transgressive sexualities) to strengthen the dominant (hetero)normative sexual order. In this landscape of emotional adjudication, the ‘sexual’ invariably comes under erasure unless it meets the ‘community standard’ of honourable love.

Exposure and Response Prevention in Virtual Reality for Patients with Contamination-Related Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: a Case Series.

Exposure therapy in virtual reality is successful in treating anxiety disorders. Studies on exposure and response prevention in virtual reality (VERP) in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) are rare, and it is unclear whether distress associated with other emotions than anxiety (e.g., disgust) can be evoked. The present study aimed to investigate whether distress can be induced during VERP in patients with contamination-related OCD (C-OCD) and a primary feeling of disgust. We treated eight female patients with C-OCD with the primary emotion of disgust over six weeks with VERP and assessed their OC symptoms before and after the intervention period with the Y-BOCS. We measured subjective units of distress (SUD), heart rate and skin conductivity (arousal), sense of presence, and simulator sickness during four consecutive exposure sessions. VERP was able to induce distress and arousal. The qualitative feedback was heterogeneous and sense of presence moderate. Patients' OC symptoms reduced over the treatment period with medium to large effect sizes, but only two patients were considered responders; two patients discontinued treatment due to lack of treatment success. Although VERP was able to induce distress and arousal associated with disgust and evoked a moderate sense of presence, the low rate of symptom reduction diminishes the positive results. Possible reasons for the heterogeneous results and implications are discussed. Trial registration: German Registry for Clinical Studies (DRKS00016929), 10.04.2019.

Fronto—Parietal Regions Predict Transient Emotional States in Emotion Modulated Response Inhibition via Low Frequency and Beta Oscillations

The current study evaluated the impact of task-relevant emotion on inhibitory control while focusing on midline cortical regions rather than brain asymmetry. Single-trial time-frequency analysis of electroencephalography recordings linked with response execution and response inhibition was done while thirty-four participants performed the emotion modulated stop-signal task. To evaluate individual differences across decision-making processes involved in inhibitory control, a hierarchical drift-diffusion model was used to fit data from Go-trials for each of the 34 participants. Response threshold in the early processing stage for happy and disgust emotions could be distinguished from the later processing stage at the mid-parietal and mid-frontal regions, respectively, by the single-trial power increments in low frequency (delta and theta) bands. Beta desynchronization in the mid-frontal region was specific for differentiating disgust from neutral emotion in the early as well as later processing stages. The findings are interpreted based on the influence of emotional stimuli on early perceptual processing originating as a bottom-up process in the mid-parietal region and later proceeding to the mid-frontal region responsible for cognitive control processing, which resulted in enhanced inhibitory performance. The results show the importance of mid-frontal and mid-parietal regions in single-trial dynamics of inhibitory control processing.

Constructing Film Emotions

In the classical view of emotion, the basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise) are assumed to be natural kinds that are perceiver-independent. Correspondingly, each is thought to possess a distinct neural and physiological signature, accompanied by an expression that is universally recognized despite differences in culture, era, and language. An alternative, the theory of constructed emotion, emphasizes that, while the underlying interoceptive sensations are biological, emotional concepts are learned, socially constructed categories, characterized by many-to-many relationships among diverse brain states, physiological signs, facial movements, and their emotional meanings. This biocultural view permits a greater degree of cultural-historical specificity when interpreting the emotions of others. In this article, I consider the implications of the theory of constructed emotion for cognitive film theory, especially regarding the interpretation of depicted facial expressions of emotion as one aspect of cinematic expression. Particular attention is given to recent work revisiting the Kuleshov effect, in which the meaning of a character’s facial expression is thought to change in the context of a montage.

Mental health professionals’ attitudes towards patients with borderline personality disorder: The role of disgust

IntroductionMental health professionals’ derogatory attitudes towards patients diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) may negatively affect treatment outcomes.ObjectivesWe aimed to identify a) negative attitudes exhibited by mental health professionals towards BPD patients and b) the effects of disgust propensity and disgust sensitivity on theses negative attitudes.MethodsMental health professionals (N = 136) completed questionnaires on attitudes towards BPD patients, disgust propensity/sensitivity, and sociodemographic variables.ResultsSignificant differences in negative attitudes toward BPD patients based on gender, marital status, occupational subgroup, educational level, psychotherapy training, level of exposure to BPD patients, and political ideology were found. Results suggested BPD patients are viewed by mental health professionals as ineffective, incomprehensible, dangerous, unworthy, immoral, undesirable to be with, and dissimilar to the mental health professionals. Moreover, disgust propensity and the pathogen component of disgust sensitivity were associated with stronger negative attitudes towards BPD patients.ConclusionsThe findings emphasize the importance of mental health professionals’ awareness of the emotion of disgust as a relevant factor to their negative attitudes towards BPD patients.DisclosureNo significant relationships.

The effect of contamination disgust on Covid-19-related anxiety

IntroductionIt is proven that high levels of disgust contribute to implementing protective behaviors. Investigators also discovered that the emotion of disgust plays a central role in determining anxiety related to the contraction of COVID-19. Few data are available about the role of the contamination disgust, a specific disgust domain, in this relationship.ObjectivesThe effect of contamination disgust on COVID-19-related anxiety was investigated.Methods 295 healthy subjects were enrolled through an online survey. They completed Disgust Scale-Revised (DS-R) and were asked to estimate their levels of Covid-19-related anxiety in 12 proposed situations. A total score was then calculated. An ANOVA model having Covid-19-related anxiety total score as dependent variable, and DS-R contamination disgust, age, and sex as predictors was estimated.ResultsThe overall model was significant (F(3,291)=6.402, p<0.001) and explained 6.2% of total Covid-19 anxiety variance (R2=0.062). The effect of DS-R contamination disgust on Covid-19-related anxiety was positive, significant (B=0.974, t(291)=3.227, p=0.001) and explained 3.5% of Covid-19-related anxiety variance (partial η2=0.035). A significant effect of sex was detected (F(1,291)=4.919, p=0.027), with females having higher Covid-19-related anxiety than males, while no effect was detected for age (B=-0.024, t(291)=-0.884, p=0.377).ConclusionsThe presented data provide preliminary evidence for an effect of contamination disgust on Covid-19-related anxiety.DisclosureNo significant relationships.

0658 Slow-Wave Sleep Disruption Decreases Ability to Recognize Certain Negative Emotions

Abstract Introduction Research has demonstrated that sleep deprivation may alter emotion recognition. Given that emotion recognition is critical for effective human communication, it is essential to understand how sleep is involved in this process. Slow-wave sleep (SWS) has been suggested to be important for the consolidation and processing of emotional memories and neuroplasticity. This study aimed to examine the impact of experimental disruption of SWS on emotion recognition to further understand the contribution of SWS. Methods 31 participants (20 individuals diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), 11 healthy controls (HC)) completed two overnight sleep studies spaced one week apart. One night served as baseline (BL) and on the other night participants underwent slow-wave disruption (SWD), where SWS was disrupted using auditory stimulation. In the morning following each overnight visit, participants completed an emotion recognition task. Accuracy scores were computed as the percentage correct in each of 10 categories of emotions (anger, contempt, disgust, embarrassment, fear, joy, neutral, pride, sadness, and surprise). Repeated measures ANOVA was used to assess the impact of SWD on emotion recognition with group (HC, MDD) as the between subjects factor and condition (BL, SWD) as the within subjects factor. Results Results revealed a significant main effect of condition for disgust (F=13.72, p< .001), embarrassment (F=6.23, p=.019), and surprise (F=8.06, p=.008), with follow-up t-tests demonstrating that accuracy for the recognition of disgust and embarrassment decreased following SWD and accuracy for surprise increasing following SWD. No significant interactions were found for group*condition (ps>.105). Conclusion These results suggest that while SWD decreases the ability to recognize certain negative emotions, it also increases the ability to recognize surprise, which is in line with previous research examining acute total sleep deprivation. Interestingly, there appears to be no difference in the ability to recognize emotions between individuals with and without depression. Slow-wave sleep deficits, common in disorders such as depression and schizophrenia, may therefore contribute to poor communication abilities through decreased ability to recognize emotions, increasing the risk of interpersonal distress and mental health problems. Support (If Any) Goldschmied: K23MH118580 (NIMH)

Linguistic Representations of <i>Disgust</i> in the Modern German Language

The present research featured linguistic units of the primary and secondary nomination, as well as expressive interjections, which describe the emotion of disgust and its physiological characteristics. The purpose of the research was to analyze the linguistic representations of disgust and to describe the physiological characteristics that reflect the fundamental status of the emotion. The study focused on the German lexeme Ekel, linguistic metaphors, metaphors with somatic components, and expressive interjections. The authors analyzed linguistic representations of the emotion of disgust, outlined its somatic components, described its physiological characteristics, defined the actual linguistic nomination of disgust, classified linguistic metaphors and metaphors with the somatic components according to linguistic hierarchy, and analyzed the somatic components that reflect the physiological characteristics of disgust. The emotion of disgust appeared to be based on such physical sensations as choking, nausea, and vomiting. The expressive interjections proved to reflect the intensity of the emotion. Disgust is represented at three levels: non-verbal – by facial expressions and gestures; physiological – nausea, asthma attacks, gag reflex; verbally – the base lexeme-representative der Ekel, the metaphor-word die Grenze, the metaphorword with the somatic component Brechmittel, the metaphor-phrase Ekel schüren, the metaphor-sentence with the somatic component Das Ekelhafte würgt mich, and the expressive interjections Bäh!, Ih!, Igitt!, Pfui!

An Urdu speech corpus for emotion recognition.

Emotion recognition from acoustic signals plays a vital role in the field of audio and speech processing. Speech interfaces offer humans an informal and comfortable means to communicate with machines. Emotion recognition from speech signals has a variety of applications in the area of human computer interaction (HCI) and human behavior analysis. In this work, we develop the first emotional speech database of the Urdu language. We also develop the system to classify five different emotions: sadness, happiness, neutral, disgust, and anger using different machine learning algorithms. The Mel Frequency Cepstrum Coefficient (MFCC), Linear Prediction Coefficient (LPC), energy, spectral flux, spectral centroid, spectral roll-off, and zero-crossing were used as speech descriptors. The classification tests were performed on the emotional speech corpus collected from 20 different subjects. To evaluate the quality of speech emotions, subjective listing tests were conducted. The recognition of correctly classified emotions in the complete Urdu emotional speech corpus was 66.5% with K-nearest neighbors. It was found that the disgust emotion has a lower recognition rate as compared to the other emotions. Removing the disgust emotion significantly improves the performance of the classifier to 76.5%.

Acceptance of vulgarity in marketing: The moderating roles of product type and consumers’ political ideology

One debate about theories of disgust surround whether the emotion is elicited by adaptationist or by cultural sensitivities. We examine this question by examining the disgust that profanity elicits. This research examines two moderators that predict consumers’ acceptance of vulgar language within advertising contexts. Specifically, we focus on product type (new vs old) and consumers’ political ideology (conservative vs liberal), proposing that conservatives (vs liberals) are less accepting of new (vs existing) products advertised using vulgar language. This is potentially because, we propose and find, conservative consumers are more sensitive to the disgust emotion, and new products advertised with vulgar language elicit more disgust. We conducted three experiments to test the hypotheses. Experiment 1 finds support for our overall hypothesis while Experiments 2 and 3 find evidence for the role of disgust via both mediation and moderation techniques. Our findings suggest that the disgust emotion is driven by cultural and not purely by evolutionary sensitivities. We are also the first authors, to our knowledge, to connect the disgust literature to vulgar language. Hence, our findings offer both practical and theoretical implications regarding the use of vulgar language in marketing.

Pathogen disgust sensitivity: Individual differences in pathogen perception or pathogen avoidance?

The emotion disgust motivates the avoidance of pathogens and contaminants. Individuals differ in their tendency to experience disgust and this is referred to as pathogen disgust sensitivity. Yet, it remains unclear which differences in psychological processes are captured by pathogen disgust sensitivity. We tested two hypotheses about how the information processing structure underlying pathogen avoidance might give rise to individual differences in pathogen disgust sensitivity. Participants (n = 998) rated the perceived health of individuals with or without facial blemishes and indicated how comfortable they would feel about having physical contact with them. For participants with high disgust sensitivity, facial blemishes were more indicative of poor health and perceived health was more strongly related to comfort with physical contact. These findings suggest that pathogen disgust sensitivity reflects individual differences in the tendency to interpret stimuli as an infection risk and the weight given to estimated infection risk when deciding who should be approached or avoided.

Visual Event-Related Potentials under External Emotional Stimuli in Bipolar I Disorder with and without Hypersexuality.

Hypersexuality is related to functions of personality and emotion and is a salient symptom of bipolar I disorder especially during manic episode. However, it is uncertain whether bipolar I disorder with (BW) and without (BO) hypersexuality exhibits different cerebral activations under external emotion stimuli. In 54 healthy volunteers, 27 BW and 26 BO patients, we administered the visual oddball event-related potentials (ERPs) under external emotions of Disgust, Erotica, Fear, Happiness, Neutral, and Sadness. Participants’ concurrent states of mania, hypomania, and depression were also evaluated. The N1 latencies under Erotica and Happiness were prolonged, and the P3b amplitudes under Fear and Sadness were decreased in BW; the P3b amplitudes under Fear were increased in BO. The parietal, frontal, and occipital activations were found in BW, and the frontal and temporal activations in BO under different external emotional stimuli, respectively. Some ERP components were correlated with the concurrent affective states in three groups of participants. The primary perception under Erotica and Happiness, and voluntary attention under Fear and Sadness, were impaired in BW, while the voluntary attention under Fear was impaired in BO. Our study indicates different patterns of visual attentional deficits under different external emotions in BW and BO.

Reading Emotions in Faces With and Without Masks Is Relatively Independent of Extended Exposure and Individual Difference Variables.

The ability to read emotions in faces helps humans efficiently assess social situations. We tested how this ability is affected by aspects of familiarization with face masks and personality, with a focus on emotional intelligence (measured with an ability test, the MSCEIT, and a self-report scale, the SREIS). To address aspects of the current pandemic situation, we used photos of not only faces per se but also of faces that were partially covered with face masks. The sample (N = 49), the size of which was determined by an a priori power test, was recruited in Germany and consisted of healthy individuals of different ages [M = 24.8 (18–64) years]. Participants assessed the emotional expressions displayed by six different faces determined by a 2 (sex) × 3 (age group: young, medium, and old) design. Each person was presented with six different emotional displays (angry, disgusted, fearful, happy, neutral, and sad) with or without a face mask. Accuracy and confidence were lower with masks—in particular for the emotion disgust (very often misinterpreted as anger) but also for happiness, anger, and sadness. When comparing the present data collected in July 2021 with data from a different sample collected in May 2020, when people first started to familiarize themselves with face masks in Western countries during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, we did not detect an improvement in performance. There were no effects of participants’ emotional intelligence, sex, or age regarding their accuracy in assessing emotional states in faces for unmasked or masked faces.

Incidental Emotions and Cooperation in a Public Goods Game.

The study reported here considers the relationship between emotional state and cooperation. An experiment is conducted in which the emotions of fear, happiness, and disgust are induced using 360-degree videos, shown in virtual reality. There is also a control condition in which a neutral state is induced. Under the Fear, Happiness, and Disgust conditions, the cooperation level is lower than under the Neutral condition. Furthermore, cooperation declines over time in the three emotion conditions, while it does not under Neutral. The findings suggest that emotions are associated with the dynamic pattern of declining cooperation over time.

Mental Health Professionals’ Attitudes towards Patients with Borderline Personality Disorder: The Role of Disgust

Negative attitudes towards patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) may affect treatment outcomes. We aimed to identify a) negative attitudes exhibited by mental health professionals towards patients with BPD and b) the effects of disgust propensity and disgust sensitivity on these negative attitudes. Mental health professionals (N = 136) completed questionnaires on attitudes towards patients with BPD and disgust propensity/sensitivity. Significant differences in negative attitudes towards patients with BPD based on gender, marital status, occupational subgroup, educational level, psychotherapy training, level of exposure to patients with BPD, and political ideology were found. Results suggested patients with BPD are viewed by mental health professionals as ineffective, incomprehensible, dangerous, unworthy, immoral, undesirable to be with, and dissimilar to the mental health professionals. Moreover, disgust propensity and disgust sensitivity were associated with stronger negative attitudes towards patients with BPD. The findings emphasize the importance of mental health professionals’ awareness of the emotion of disgust as a relevant factor to their negative attitudes towards patients with BPD.

Is it possible to overcome disgust? An ambivalent emotion

A growing interest for the emotion of disgust has recently arisen in international contexts acrossseveral fields of research. A general definition of disgust will be primarily assumed: by disgust I understand a total rejection that generates a motion of repulsion and removal of an object that is in the proximity of the subject, without constituting a real danger. In reference to the notion of taboo, I will first of all assume its ambivalence. The emotion of disgust, essentially natural and cultural at the same time, as a typical trait of the process of human civilization that distinguishes humans from animals. At variance with other theories of disgust, I will argue that it is not possible to theoretically articulate the overcoming of disgust, but that it is possible to educate about this emotion through artistic experience. On this ground, an ethics of disgust will be outlined, which starts from the acknowledgement of one of our most bodily emotions.

Harassment of Journalists and Its Aftermath: Anti-Press Violence, Psychological Suffering, and an Internal Chilling Effect

Anti-press sentiment based on negative emotions of disgust and hatred has prevailed in Korea since the mid-2010s. Through in-depth interviews with ten journalists working for Korean news organizations, supplemented with an analysis of self-reflective articles, this study investigates how journalists experience this audience hostility and harassment, how they cope with it, and how their practices are influenced by it. The analysis reveals that, combined with the dualistic views of populist politics and the influence of misogynic narratives, journalists who cover topics, such as politics and gender, are more likely to become targets of anti-press violence. Moreover, it shows that anti-press violence induces negative emotions, such as discomfort, anger, lethargy, and fear, among journalists. To cope with these emotions, with little support from their news organizations, journalists tend to pursue emotion-focused coping strategies, such as striving for perfection in the newswork process, building emotional boundaries between the audience and themselves, counter-hating readers, and blaming other journalists. Finally, the paper suggests that anti-press violence in Korea promotes a chilling effect in news organizations that, consequently, may infringe on individual journalists’ autonomy and editorial independence.

An empirical analysis of mobile learning app usage experience

The study analyzed the reviews and ratings of mobile learning apps. Word frequency analysis, sentiment analysis, and content analysis were performed on 2000 reviews of four highly rated, downloaded, and reviewed mobile learning apps on the Google Play store. The results revealed that the most frequently mentioned topics included mobile applications, courses, and teaching. The majority of the reviews had a positive sentiment. Trust, anticipation, and joy were found to be the prominent emotions. Further, the text was coded to three themes (app quality, app suitability, and influence to use) and ten sub-themes. We found that seven identified sub-themes (technical quality, customer support quality, content quality, teaching quality, usefulness, compatibility, and learner influencing others), learners' sentiment, and length of review influence star ratings of apps. The star ratings and emotions of joy, trust, disgust, and sadness were moderately associated. The association was strong between the emotions trust and joy, sadness and fear. Further, there was a significant difference between star ratings based on the apps' sector (public or private) and based on the apps' education level (school or higher). The article concludes with a discussion on the learners’ experience using mobile learning apps, implications for practice, limitations, and future research directions.