Murder as an attempt to manage self-disgust
David Jones in Working with Dangerous People, 2018
To summarise, disgust is an affect probably originally founded in response to bad tastes and smells with their link to spoiled food and over the ages generalised to certain tactile experiences, sliminess for example, and further extended to thoughts of something expected to be disgusting. The development of disgust seems to be culturally related, is easily transferred and now includes not just threat to the body but threat to the soul or core self.8 Furthermore, it features in interpersonal relationships, where it is experienced as a response to others. Characteristically it entails a powerful emotional or physical rejection of someone felt to be threatening an invasion of the self. It may be expressed through rejection, attacking or nauseated tolerance.4 The disgusting object is believed to be tainted, damaged and irreparable.
Psychological issues and dying
Ad (Sandy) Macleod, Ian Maddocks in The Psychiatry of Palliative Medicine, 2018
The skin is involved by metastases in 3–4% of malignant tumours. Malignant fungating wounds are unsightly and smelly. They are humiliating and shameful to the sufferer. The practice of palliative care involves acquaintance with disgust.37 Disgust literally means ‘bad taste’. It is evoked by repugnant smell, touch, sight and hearing, and encourages recoil from the offensive stimulus.38 What constitutes a disgusting stimulus varies among individuals and cultures.39 Disgust is an emotion, and its function is to support survival by avoiding the dangers of contamination or pollution. It is innate and ‘hard-wired’. There is also an alluring component to disgust (e.g. horror movies), as if to keep the response practised.
ENTRIES A–Z
Philip Winn in Dictionary of Biological Psychology, 2003
PERCEPTION), physiological reactions (NAUSEA and VOMITING) and actions (to create distance from, and removal of, the object of disgust). It is often associated with the ingestion of contaminants (particularly animal waste products) and is not innate— conceptions of disgust develop over the early years of life and are culturally specific. The consumption of invertebrates or certain mammals (dogs for example) is considered very differently across societies. Disgust is a good example of an interaction between physiological, cognitive, emotional and social processes.
A Meta-Analytic Review of the Association Between Disgust and Prejudice Toward Gay Men
Published in Journal of Homosexuality, 2020
Mark J. Kiss, Melanie A. Morrison, Todd G. Morrison
Within the realm of emotions and prejudice, researchers have allocated attention to the study of disgust, operationalized as an individual difference variable (i.e., disgust sensitivity) or as an induced state, and prejudice toward sexual minority persons (typically, gay men). Disgust is commonly understood as the rejection of unpleasant stimuli based on sight, smell, or even mere thought. However, it is a complicated emotion because its elicitors may originate from a variety of sources, including bodily products, sexual behaviors, animals, interpersonal contact, and moral offenses (Rozin et al., 2008). A number of disgust domains have been identified: (1) core; (2) animal-reminder; (3) interpersonal; (4) moral; and, most recently, (5) sexual (Haidt, McCauley, & Rozin, 1994; Hodson et al., 2013; Smith, 2012; Tybur, Lieberman, & Griskevicius, 2009). Each form of disgust will be outlined briefly. However, in doing so, we are not implying that these domains are orthogonal (i.e., they do not overlap).
The psychology of coronavirus fear: Are healthcare professionals suffering from corona-phobia?
Published in International Journal of Healthcare Management, 2020
Infectious diseases may have been one of the major challenges to our life since the birth of modern medicine [9]. The immune system has some impressive pathways to track and destroy the pathogenic invaders. Unfortunately, these responses leave us feeling tired and lazy that our infected ancestors would have been unable to perform vital tasks. This disease has been affecting our immune system by changing both our personality and psychology [10]. Fears of contagion drive anyone to become more conformist and less adventurous. The moral decisions are becoming stricter and the personal views are becoming more social. Consequently, something that reduces the risk of infection in the first place would have offered a clear survival benefit. Of this cause, we have established a series of involuntary psychological responses first line of protection which limit our interaction with possible pathogens. The disgust reaction is one of the most evident components of the behavioral immune system [10]. Because breaking social norms can have harmful and unintended consequences. If we avoid objects that smell unpleasant or depress that consider being unclean, we unconsciously seek to prevent the risk of contagion. Even, thinking about a situation like a pandemic can make people value conformity over eccentricity. The same logic may explain why we become more morally vigilant in such an outbreak.
The Reciprocal Relationship Between Sexual Arousal and Disgust as Evidenced in Automatic Approach-Avoidance Behavior
Published in The Journal of Sex Research, 2020
Jessica Hinzmann, Charmaine Borg, Johan R. L. Verwoerd, Peter J. de Jong
It has been proposed that disgust can be divided into three functional domains: pathogen disgust, sexual disgust, and moral disgust (Tybur, Lieberman, & Griskevicius, 2009; Tybur, Lieberman, Kurzban, & DeScioli, 2013). Pathogen disgust is assumed to function as a “behavioral immune system” preventing contact with and consumption of infectious microorganisms, as described earlier (Schaller, 2006; Schaller & Duncan, 2007). Sexual disgust is assumed to be evolved to avoid partners and behaviors that may jeopardize one’s reproductive success, thereby shrinking the pool to those likely to contribute to the production of healthy offspring. Lastly, moral disgust is assumed to be related to social transgressions. It promotes distance from social relationships with norm-violating individuals that may impose costs on oneself or on members of one’s social network. Thus, in the broadest sense, disgust motivates avoidance of stimuli and individuals that may pose a threat to our survival.
Related Knowledge Centers
- Anxiety Disorder
- Emotion
- Somatosensory System
- Taste
- Visual Perception
- Sense
- Sense of Smell
- Blood-Injection-Injury Type Phobia
- Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder
- Fear