The account serves as an evolutionary debunking argument against invoking disgust in moral justification. Adoption, Social, Psychological, and Evolutionary Perspect... Attachment in Social and Emotional Development across the ... Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in Adults. Research on disgust connects to a surprisingly large variety of topics across the behavioral sciences and humanities. These forms of religious scrupulosity – fear of God and fear of sin – are influenced by an enormous range of societal and psychological factors. Association learning of likes and dislikes: A review of 25 years of research on human evaluative conditioning. In fact, disgust sensitivity can also affect reactions to the behaviours of other people. New York: Routledge. Edited by Michael Lewis, J. M. Haviland-Jones, and L. F. Barrett. Yuck! An account of disgust in individuals and cultures meant to explain how the seemingly disparate elicitors of disgust, such as food and moral offenses, could be united by one emotion. Available online by subscription or purchase. And those with disgust towards sexual practices were more likely to fear sin. Expand or collapse the "in this article" section, Expand or collapse the "related articles" section, Expand or collapse the "forthcoming articles" section. We can see its influence in behavioural codes that set out what is considered right and wrong. A. Curtis, Valerie. Philosophy Compass 9.7:478–493. While the targets may have changed, the underlying rationales and approaches are remarkably similar. 1997. Concern for purity is identified as a central theme in every society. Religious beliefs and behaviours are without a doubt influenced by faith and dogma, and are often rooted in centuries of devout practice. 2011. New York: W.W. Norton. Suggests that an understanding of the emotion could help us utilize it toward better ends. For example, Kelly 2011 aims to undermine the use of disgust in justifying moral conclusions, Curtis 2013 attempts to refocus our understanding so we can better utilize disgust, Herz 2012 addresses the nature vs. nurture and normalcy debates, and Miller 1997 addresses the role of disgust in our attitudes toward life. Researchers continue to debate the differences and similarities between episodes of disgust that are provoked by elicitors from each these different domains. Aestheticians have also taken an interest in disgust and the way artists have used it to evoke characteristic response in their audiences. Makes the case that disgust is ubiquitous. Rozin, P., Haidt, J., & McCauley, C. (1999). De Houwer, J., Thomas, S., & Baeyens, F. (2001). New York: Routledge. These studies are among the first to suggest that the basic emotion of disgust may drive religious thoughts and feelings. Understanding how religion – and its echoes in secular belief systems – motivates people to behave in certain ways is increasingly important in a culture in which people often have multiple, changing identities. 2008). The facial display of disgust, which often involves tightening the upper lip and wrinkling the nose, creates a physical barrier that prevents the intake of potential contaminants. Press. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Plunging head first into this and other murky questions about disgust is a small number of dedicated (and strong-stomached) researchers. A treatment most foul: Handling disgust in cognitive-behavior therapy. New York: Guilford Press. Miller, William. Disgust operates in the moral and aesthetic domains as well, imbuing a class of norms with its singular phenomenology and motivational force, the effects and implications of which have been investigated and debated by psychologists, anthropologists, and philosophers. Uses the boundary issues surrounding disgust to explore how the emotion relates to the sense of self and of the other. Please subscribe or login. 3d ed. This kind of moral sensitivity is an important moderator of our behaviour. Intersection  of disgust and fear: Normative and pathological views. Most notably, there is increased evidence that disgust is implicated in many specific phobias, particularly blood-injury-injection, spider, snake, and other small animal phobias. Our findings suggest basic emotional processes that exist separate from religious doctrine and largely outside conscious control may underlie some fundamental faith-based beliefs and behaviours. This centrality is demonstrated by revealing purity’s wide-ranging influence on attitudes toward society, values, knowledge, and cosmology. Carl Senior, Reader in Behavioural Sciences, Aston University; Patrick Stewart, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Arkansas, and Tom Adams, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Kentucky. The anatomy of disgust. Another form of skepticism takes issue with the descriptive claims and empirical evidence itself, questioning whether the effects of disgust on moral judgment are as large and systematic as asserted, with some questioning whether what appears to be influencing moral judgments is genuinely disgust at all, or whether talk of ‘moral disgust’ is merely metaphorical. (2000). Individual Differences in Attachment Relationships. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here. The biological function of disgust is thought to be important for explaining disgust’s cognitive and cultural role; according to Kelly 2011, Miller 1997, and Douglas 2002, disgust played a significant role in the development of cultural taboos and moral practices. Others are skeptical, arguing that ideally disgust would be completely absent from morality, and that we should aspire to minimize its role in moral judgments and social institutions. Incorporates interesting discussion of disgust’s relationship to sensory modalities such as hearing. We found that religious scrupulosity may be driven by sensitivity to disgust, particularly strong feelings of disgust for germs and sexual practices but, paradoxically, not for general immorality. Participants who saw the germ-related images expressed feeling dramatically more disgust and reported more extreme levels of religious scrupulosity in terms of fear of sin, but not fear of God. Don’t look, don’t touch, don’t eat: The science behind revulsion. It traces out the many tendrils disgust puts into unexpected areas of our lives, including sex, law, politics, and the ways that experiencing disgust can, in the right circumstances, be oddly pleasurable. Our research shows that disgust-based sensitivity may play an important role in motivating specific religious behaviour. Disgust. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM... Educational Settings, Assessment of Thinking in, Environmental Neuroscience and Environmental Psychology, Fundamental Attribution Error/Correspondence Bias. Eating a blended cockroach or sleeping in a bed in which someone died the night before are unlikely to physically harm you, but they could make you feel somehow violated, like you have ingested or touched something that you simply shouldn’t have. of Chicago Press. We evolved the emotion of disgust because it can protect us from things that could harm us, such as germ-carrying substances. But our recent behavioural research highlights a very important and basic motivator that may lie beneath both these fears: the emotion of disgust. These areas of research are connected to recent work on disgust and politics, and how a person’s political orientation relates to disgust sensitivity, norm cognition, and their conception of the content and boundaries of the moral domain. Focuses on recent developments, active points of debate, and projections about the direction in which the field is heading. Originally published in 1966, Douglas’s work is influential across a range of disciplines, from religious studies to social theory. Log in, American Association Of Retired Persons (AARP). We can feel disgusted when people break our moral codes, including by pursuing sexual practices we disapprove of. But we can also see it in more general attitudes to authority, sexuality and what to do with the people who don’t follow these codes. Type A Behavior Pattern (Coronary Prone Personality). Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. Much research has focused on investigating the variety of domains in which disgust appears to operate, ranging from food regulation to disease avoidance to sexual activity and mate selection. Authors agree that disgust was a joint cultural and evolutionary product, but differ in emphasis. These questions have been addressed by researchers using a number of approaches. 2004. Disgust: The gatekeeper emotion. Herz, Rachel. Several works employ the empirical literature concerning disgust in order to advance normative or other philosophical goals. A neuroscientist’s look at the emotion of disgust that explores surprising facts about the effects of the emotion on our biology and behavior. We conducted two online studies. McKay, , & Tsao, S. (in press). You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Establishes a dialectic for the self between preventing intrusions and connecting with the other. 2008 address neuro- and cognitive scientific approaches to disgust. 2002. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. © Copyright 2020 Center for the National Interest All Rights Reserved. Hepburn, T., & Page, A. Effects of images about fear and disgust upon responses to blood-injury phobic stimuli. Evaluative conditioning: A possible explanation for the acquisition of disgust responses? (1999). Individual differences in disgust sensitivity: Comparisons and evaluations of paper-and-pencil versus behavioral. Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on Emotional responding to fearful and disgusting stimuli in specific phobics. Disgust may influence the development of religious scrupulosity or vice versa, or it may be some combination of the two. Details our anxious relation to bodily processes, but explains that disgust moves beyond the physical, having a substantial influence on social hierarchy. Disgust is perhaps most often associated with foul-tasting foods and other substances or people that might spread disease. It serves as a case study in debates about the nature of emotions themselves, their relationship to cognition and affect, whether and how much they might be innately constrained or socially constructed, which parts might be universal (and uniquely) human, and which can vary across cultures and eras, malleable in the face of diverse social influences. Kelly, Dan. Strohminger, Nina. this page. Basic emotions, as defined most clearly by the psychologist Paul Ekman, are differentiated from more complex emotions on the grounds that basic emotions have s…