Disgust Responses Research Articles

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for a Child With Misophonia: A Case Study

Misophonia, a condition involving hypersensitivity, anger, and/or disgust in response to specific noises (e.g., chewing, tapping), is highly underresearched in children. Several case studies point towards the utility of cognitive behavioral therapy and related treatments (e.g., acceptance and commitment therapy [ACT]). ACT presents a particularly promising option, as it focuses on building psychological flexibility in response to difficult internal experiences, rather than trying to remove or change them (e.g., responding effectively to irritation provoked by chewing). The present case study describes “Kelly” (pseudonym), a 12-year-old girl with moderately severe misophonia symptoms, who received a 16-session course of ACT for misophonia. At post-treatment, Kelly reported a decline to the mild range of misophonia, as well as re-engagement in activities that were important to her and clinically significant reductions in depressive symptoms. These results suggest that ACT may be an appropriate treatment for children with misophonia; however, much more research is warranted.

Horror, fear, and moral disgust are differentially elicited by different types of harm.

Witnessing or experiencing extreme and incomprehensible harm elicits an intense emotional response that is often called "horror." Although traditional emotion taxonomies have categorized horror as a subtype of fear and/or disgust, recent empirical work has indicated that horror is a distinct emotion category (Cowen & Keltner, 2017). However, exactly how horror is different from fear and disgust has remained unclear. The current studies represent the first empirical attempt to clarify how horror is distinct from fear and moral disgust. Results indicated that these emotions are elicited by different aspects of harm: horror is a response to the severity or abnormality of harm, fear to the self-relevance of harm, and moral disgust to the harm's causal agent. In a survey of personal experiences of emotions (Study 1), participants reported having felt horror in response to the actual occurrence of extreme or abnormal harm, but felt fear and moral disgust in response to events involving no harm or only mild harm. Participants also reported greater cognitive disruption (e.g., disbelief, schema-incongruence) during horror than during fear or moral disgust. Experiments testing the effects of different aspects of harm on emotion ratings indicated that horror was differentially increased by harm that was abnormal (vs. common) and had already occurred (vs. potential threat), whereas fear was differentially increased by harm that had high (vs. low) self-relevance (Study 2). Further, extreme (vs. mild) harm differentially increased horror, but the presence (vs. absence) of a blameworthy agent differentially increased moral disgust (Study 3). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

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.

Disgustingly perfect: An examination of disgust, perfectionism, and gender.

High levels of disgust and perfectionism co-exist in some clinical disorders raising questions about the relationship between the two. This research evaluated socially-related and physically-related disgust in people with varying levels of perfectionism. In Study 1, 120 college students participated in a state emotion-eliciting scenario task, then completed both the Almost Perfect Scale-Revised and the Three Dimensions of Disgust Survey (TDDS). In Study 2, 380 Qualtrics users completed the scenarios, along with the TDDS and Multidimensional Perfectionist Scale. Both studies showed that state emotions differed from each other in ways that were unrelated to perfectionism. Gender differences were seen in the perfectionist groups, state disgust responses, and trait sexual disgust. However, Study 2 also showed relationships between trait perfectionism and disgust. The differing state emotional responses show that contextual interpersonal factors are highly important in disgust behaviors. Additionally, the findings suggest that gender could be important in the relationship between disgust and perfectionism.

Identity construction in medical student stories about experiences of disgust in early nursing home placements: a dialogical narrative analysis

ObjectivesTo explore medical students’ reflective essays about encounters with residents during preclinical nursing home placements.DesignDialogical narrative analysis aiming at how students characterise residents and construct identities in relation to them.SettingMedical...

A comprehensive group-based cognitive behavioural treatment for blood-injection-injury phobia.

A key feature of blood-injection-injury (BII) phobia is activation of disgust responses, in addition to fear. Yet, standard treatments have largely neglected addressing disgust responses. The disorder is further complicated by fainting in 75% of sufferers. Moreover, treatments have been traditionally delivered in an individual format, which may not be as efficient as group treatment. The aim of this study was to develop a group-based programme for BII phobia, with components targeting fear, disgust, and fainting, to determine feasibility and effectiveness of such an intervention. Participants took part in an 8-session, group-based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) programme for BII phobia (N = 40). The key outcome measure was the Multidimensional Blood/Injury Phobia Inventory, which assesses a range of phobic stimuli and responses (including fear, disgust, and fainting). There were significant improvements, with large effect sizes, across symptoms over the course of treatment. Participants with higher disgust sensitivity reported higher pre-treatment symptom severity and greater life interference than those with lower disgust scores. Despite this, neither pre-treatment disgust sensitivity nor fainting history impacted on treatment response. For the first time, however, we showed that greater reductions in disgust to BII stimuli were associated with greater overall symptom reductions, highlighting the importance of disgust in the treatment of this disorder, and potentially others. Despite the heterogeneous nature of BII phobia, this group-based, modified CBT intervention was effective in reducing a variety of phobic responses, including fear, disgust, and fainting. Disgust is a key maintaining factor in blood-injection-injury phobia, which clinicians should consider in their assessment and treatment of this disorder. There is little in the existing literature to guide clinicians in this regard. This study examined a novel group treatment for blood-injection-injury phobia which included strategies to target disgust, in addition to traditional CBT strategies to address fear and fainting. The treatment was feasible and acceptable. Symptoms of fear, disgust, and fainting reduced significantly over treatment. Changes in disgust symptoms were associated with overall symptom changes, however a control group is needed to determine the effects of individual treatment components and to make more robust conclusions about the benefits of this enhanced approach.

Understanding disgust-based food rejection in picky and non-picky eaters: Willingness to touch and taste familiar foods with changes

The tendency to feel disgusted is associated with picky eating, however, no research has so far examined how this association translates into the evaluation of foods. 232 participants were recruited through the Prolific Academic crowdsourcing research tool: 127 picky eaters and 105 non-picky eaters. Online questionnaires about picky eating, disgust sensitivity, tactile sensitivity, and anxiety were completed. Participants were presented with 16 images of familiar foods (bread, chocolate, strawberries, pizza,) and rated their willingness to touch and taste the foods. The images were either an original image (e.g. plain bread), an edible change (e.g. bread with seeds), a contamination change (e.g. bread with a bite mark) or a degraded/spoil change (e.g. bread with mould). Across the whole sample, participants were more willing to say they would touch the food than taste it, and they were least likely to want to touch or taste food with signs of spoil or rot. Disgust sensitivity mediated the relationship between willingness to taste the original food and foods with both edible changes and signs of contamination or spoil. After controlling for willingness to touch and taste the original familiar food, picky eaters were less willing to touch and taste any food with a change compared to non-picky eaters. These findings indicate that picky eaters may perceive safe edible changes to food in a similar way to inedible changes, and for them any tactile contact with changed food is aversive. Further research is needed on strategies to lessen any maladaptive disgust responses in relation to changes to familiar, edible foods.

The Private Cosmology of Public Disgust

Alongside the public and private, the sacred can represent a third social-political dispensation, as Raymond Geuss notes. The modern liberal public/private divide represents a historical anomaly, with the sacred putatively consigned to the private realm. However, recent empirical research into disgust and its influences on moral psychology casts doubt on the extent to which such schemes have in fact removed phenomena connected with the sacred from the public realm. In this paper, I argue for the continuity between disgust and the idea of ritual pollution, demonstrating how an understanding of the moral psychology of the latter phenomenon helps account for certain aspects of our ostensibly secular public realm. Of these aspects, I focus primarily on racism, and specifically individuals’ avowals of disgust in response to racism in the contemporary USA and UK. I argue that the idea of ritual pollution shows that such a response indicates a number of potential drawbacks to the socio-moral scheme underpinning the disgust, which in turn have the potential to limit social efforts to eradicate racism. I conclude that such socio-moral disgust is itself morally questionable in important ways, in addition to having the aforementioned instrumental shortcomings.

No Way, That's Gross! How Public Exposure Therapy Can Overcome Disgust Preventing Consumer Adoption of Sustainable Food Alternatives.

Two prominently discussed sustainable food alternatives—lab-meat and edible insects—elicit disgust among consumers, thereby preventing acceptance. While providing prospective consumers with more information on, for instance, the environmental benefits of lab-meat has shown some success in increasing consumer acceptance, we argue that the disgust response—the main barrier to the societal acceptance of these foods—is not addressed. This is, we argue, because disgust is not the result of misperceptions (e.g., edible insects carry diseases) and thus unlikely to be overcome by information alone. Building on the latest insights into the social origins of disgust, this manuscript reviews an alternative strategy to foster the broader acceptance of sustainable food alternatives that currently elicit disgust. Specifically, we explain why and how public exposure could be a promising avenue for marketers to reduce consumers’ disgust response and thus increase the acceptance of sustainable food alternatives.

Preferences and emotional response to weight-related terminology used by healthcare professionals to describe body weight in people living with overweight and obesity.

Previous studies have explored people's perceptions of weight-related terminology; however, to date, limited data has explored the emotional response to weight-related terms used by healthcare professionals (HCPs). This study explored the preferences and emotional responses of terms used by HCPs to describe body weight and of parents to describe their children's weight. A total of 2911 adults completed an online cross-sectional survey, with 1693 living with overweight or obesity (mean age 49.2 years [SD 12.5], female (96%), median body mass index (BMI) 31.4kg/m2 [28.1, 36.5]). The survey explored preferences of 22 weight-related terms using a 5-point Likert scale and their emotional response to these terms (using 7-core emotions). Parents also indicated preferences and emotional responses to terms used to describe their children's weight. Respondents completed the modified weight bias internalization scale to examine how this may impacted preferences. 'Weight', "unhealthy weight" and "overweight" were the three preferred terms, while "super obese", "chubby", and "extra-large" were least preferred in people living with overweight and obesity. Parents preferred 'weight', "unhealthy weight" and "body mass index", and least preferred "fat", "extra-large" and "extremely obese" when describing their children's weight. All terms elicited a negative emotional response. The most commonly emotion was sadness for terms to describe adult's bodyweight, and anger for terms used to describe children's weight. All BMI categories reported disgust with terms incorporating "obese". Our results offer novel insight into the preferred terminology and emotional responses to terminology used by HCPs for both adults and parents to describe their children's weight.

Neural Response to High and Low Energy Food Images in Anorexia Nervosa

To compare neural responses to high and low-energy food images in patients with Anorexia Nervosa (AN) and an age-matched Healthy Control (HC) group. 25 adolescents with AN and 21 HCs completed a diagnostic interview, self-report questionnaires and fMRI, during which they viewed food images evoking responses of disgust, happiness, or fear. Following whole brain analyses, neural responses in six regions of interest were examined in a series of between-group contrasts, across the three emotive categories. Compared to the HCs, people in the AN group showed increased responsivity to high-energy (1) disgust images in temporal lobe, frontal lobe, insula, and cerebellum anterior lobe; (2) fear images in occipital lobe, temporal, and frontal lobes and (3) happy images in frontal lobe, cerebellum anterior lobe, sub-lobar, and cuneus. More activity was observed in response to low-energy (1) disgust food images in the temporal lobe, frontal lobe, insula, cerebellum anterior and posterior lobes, parietal lobe, occipital lobe, and limbic lobe; (2) and happy food images in frontal lobes. Few correlations were found with levels of eating disorder symptoms. The findings highlight the emotional impact of diverse high and low-energy foods for people with AN. People without AN may have a better capacity to filter salient from non-salient information relating to the current task when viewing high energy foods. In summary, for those with AN, it would seem their ability to efficiently ‘sort-out’ information (especially information pertaining to disorder-relevant stimuli such as food images) to complete the task at hand, may be diminished.

The Sound of Smell: Associating Odor Valence With Disgust Sounds.

Olfaction has recently been highlighted as a sense poorly connected with language. Odor is difficult to verbalize, and it has few qualities that afford mimicry by vision or sound. At the same time, emotion is thought to be the most salient dimension of an odor, and it could therefore be an olfactory dimension more easily communicated. We investigated whether sounds imitative of an innate disgust response can be associated with unpleasant odors. In two experiments, participants were asked to make a forced choice between a pseudoword including a disgust sound and a neutral pseudoword, for pleasant and unpleasant odors. Overall, participants chose more disgust pseudowords than neutral pseudowords for unpleasant odors, but this was not the case for pleasant odors. This effect was not driven by a general association between unpleasant sounds and unpleasant odors, but specifically the sounds [x/χ] and [f], thought to reflect physical responses to disgusting odors, as seen in the Polish fu! or the English ugh!. In line with growing evidence that language can encode odor, we provide the first experimental evidence for an association between the sound of a word and odor valence.

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.

Disgust sensitivity mediates the link between homophobia and sexual orientation obsessive-compulsive symptoms

ABSTRACT Previous research has shown that intrusive thoughts in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) often focus on emotionally significant aspects of individuals’ lives (e.g., values and beliefs). The current study sought to expand our understanding of OC symptoms related to sexual orientation (SO-OC symptoms) by investigating the roles of homophobia (i.e., negative attitudes, affect, and behaviors toward individuals with a same-gender orientation) and disgust propensity and sensitivity. A total of 592 self-identified heterosexual college students were recruited to complete measures of homophobia, disgust propensity and sensitivity, and SO-OC symptoms. Results of separate parallel mediation analyses indicated that the relationships between homophobic affect/attitudes and avoidance/aggression on one hand, and SO-OC symptoms on the other, were partially mediated specifically by disgust sensitivity, after controlling for gender. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed, including how homophobia can be conceptualized as a disgust response in the treatment of SO-OC symptoms, as well as how other constructs of potential interest (sexual and moral disgust, religiosity, conservative sexual ideology) can be examined in future research.

Desire to eat and intake of ‘insect’ containing food is increased by a written passage: The potential role of familiarity in the amelioration of novel food disgust

Over two studies we investigated the effect of various written interventions (passages) on the disgust response towards a food (falafels) which supposedly contained mealworm (insect) flour. Actually, participants (Study 1 N = 80, Study 2 N = 78) were given the same non-mealworm containing food in all conditions. Disgust was measured using: tactile sensitivity, food intake, liking and desire to eat. Results of Study 1 showed that a sustainability passage (sustainability advantages of entomophagy), but not a delicacy passage (oro-sensory qualities of insects), was effective in reducing disgust. In Study 2, contrary to prediction, a passage describing the sustainability and nutritional advantages entomophagy failed to reduce disgust - falafel intake, liking and desire to eat were decreased. However, a passage which described how mealworm flour is produced, did significantly reduce disgust. Taken together, these studies demonstrate that written passages can alter the disgust response, notably resulting in a maintenance of food intake. Interventions that increase the perception of familiarity of a novel food, but not logic-based arguments, may be a key driver of the amelioration of disgust. These results also support the suggestion that altering the ideational component of disgust can result in changes of distaste perception.

Opinions on Insect Consumption in Hungary.

The aim of the study was to assess knowledge and opinion in the Hungarian population about the consumption of insect-based food. The questionnaire was filled in by 414 respondents. Their knowledge of edible insect consumption in different countries was average (score 4) or above on a scale of 1 (totally disagree) to 7 (totally agree). Their willingness to consume insect-based food was low, usually below average. Significantly higher scores were attained by men than women, by respondents with a university degree than those who graduated from secondary school, and the highest scores were attained by people of 30–39 age group. However, the effects of residence (town or village) and income were not significant. As Hungarians are not traditional insect consumers, there is a significant emotional response of disgust regarding food made from insects and, as insect food is not commercially available, no significant increase in insect consumption is expected in the near future.

The messy satiation effect: Understanding how eating messily can accelerate the rate of satiation and reduce consumption

The visual presentation of food plays an important role in shaping the food choices that consumers make. In the current research, we explore the impact that one's eating manner, and by extension, how messy or neat food becomes as a result, can have on enjoyment and consumption over the course of an eating episode. In a series of five studies, we find that eating in a messy manner, which degrades the visual appeal of one's food, can accelerate the rate of satiation and decrease consumption, a phenomenon we term the messy satiation effect. This effect occurs because the disgust response induced by the visual degradation of a food's presentation decreases tastiness perceptions. Accordingly, we position the messy satiation effect as a simple intervention that can be used in some circumstances to combat overconsumption and therefore increase healthier eating patterns through reducing intake, thus providing contributions to both theory and practice.

The biopolitical function of disgust: ethical and political implications of biopedagogies of disgust in anti-colonial education

ABSTRACT This paper presents how biopedagogies of disgust can make a contribution to challenging the colonial order that is sustained through affective economies of disgust. It is argued that, for this to happen, teachers need to move students away from the negative affective responses of disgust towards an affirmation of radical difference. Affective solidarity, in particular, might serve as a foundational element of affirmative biopedagogies of disgust and provide a means to reversing the negative role of disgust in colonial continuity. It is argued that fostering affective solidarity is an ethically, politically and pedagogically valuable strategy, because it does not only generate empathy for the colonized Others’ suffering throughout history, but it also cultivates in students commitment to turn critical self-reflection on the visceral elements of disgust into transformative action.

“A bit put off”: Implicit disgust responses to insect containing food

“A bit put off”: Implicit disgust responses to insect containing food

The effect of differential disgust conditioning and subsequent extinction versus counterconditioning procedures on women's sexual responses to erotic stimuli

Recent theoretical accounts point to disgust as an important factor in the development and persistence of sexual dysfunctions. This study tested if (i) contingent disgust experiences can render initially sexually arousing stimuli disgusting, and (ii) such acquired disgust responses could be best neutralized via a CS-only extinction or a counterconditioning procedure. Participants (N = 74) were exposed to a differential conditioning procedure that was followed by either a CS-only extinction or a counterconditioning procedure. Erotic films served as the CS+/CS-. A disgusting film served as the US. During the extinction procedure, the CS+ was no longer followed by the disgusting US. During counterconditioning the CS+ was paired with positive stimuli. After conditioning, the CS + elicited lower genital arousal and was rated as significantly more disgusting, less pleasant, and less sexually arousing than the CS-. These diminished genital and subjective sexual arousal responses to the CS+ were successfully restored after both the extinction and the counterconditioning procedure, whereas conditioned feelings of disgust and behavioral avoidance persisted. There was no evidence for differential effectiveness of either procedure. Thus, sexual responses can be attenuated by learned sex-disgust associations and restored by extinction and counterconditioning procedures, but conditioned feelings of disgust seem more resistant.