Distrust As a Disease Avoidance Strategy: Individual Differences in Disgust Sensitivity Regulate Generalized Social Trust

Detecting pathogen threats and avoiding disease is fundamental to human survival. The Behavioral Immune System (BIS) framework outlines a set of psychological functions that may have evolved for this purpose. Disgust is a core emotion that plays a pivotal role in the BIS, as it activates the behavioral avoidance motives that prevent people from being in contact with pathogens. To date, there has been little agreement on how disgust sensitivity might underlie moral judgments. Here, we investigated moral violations of “purity” (assumed to elicit disgust) and violations of “harm” (assumed to elicit anger). We hypothesized that individual differences in BIS-related traits would be associated with greater disgust (vs. anger) reactivity to, and greater condemnation of purity (vs. harm) violations. The study was pre-registered (https://osf.io/57nm8/). Participants (N = 632) had to rate scenarios concerning moral wrongness or inappropriateness and regarding disgust and anger. To measure individual differences in the activation of the BIS, we used our recently developed Body Odor Disgust Scale (BODS), a BIS-related trait measure that assesses individual differences in feeling disgusted by body odors. In line with our predictions, we found that scores on the BODS relate more strongly to affective reactions to Purity, as compared to Harm, violations. In addition, BODS relates more strongly to Moral condemnation than to perceived Inappropriateness of an action, and to the condemnation of Purity violations as compared to Harm violations. These results suggest that the BIS is involved in moral judgment, although to some extent this role seems to be specific for violations of “moral purity”, a concept that might be rooted in disease avoidance. Data and scripts to analyze the data are available on the Open Science Framework (OSF) repository: https://osf.io/tk4x5/. Planned analyses are available at https://osf.io/x6g3u/

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Self-Reported Sense of Smell Predicts Disgust Sensitivity and Disgust Reactivity

Journal of Individual Differences ◽

10.1027/1614-0001/a000263 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 39 (4) ◽

pp. 191-195

Author(s):

Nicholas J. Kelley ◽

Adrienne L. Crowell

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Individual Difference ◽

Olfactory Stimulus ◽

Disgust Sensitivity ◽

Sense Of Smell ◽

Olfactory Ability ◽

Good Proxy ◽

Insight Into

Abstract. Two studies tested the hypothesis that self-reported sense of smell (i.e., metacognitive insight into one’s olfactory ability) predicts disgust sensitivity and disgust reactivity. Consistent with our predictions two studies demonstrated that disgust correlates with self-reported sense of smell. Studies 1 and 2 demonstrated, from an individual difference perspective, that trait-like differences in disgust relate to self-reported sense of smell. Physical forms of disgust (i.e., sexual and pathogen disgust) drove this association. However, the association between self-reported sense of smell and disgust sensitivity is small, suggesting that it is likely not a good proxy for disgust sensitivity. The results of Study 2 extended this finding by demonstrating that individual differences in self-reported sense of smell influence how individuals react to a disgusting olfactory stimulus. Those who reported having a better sense of smell (or better insight into their olfactory ability) found a disgusting smell significantly more noxious as compared to participants reporting having a poor sense of smell (or poor insight into their olfactory ability). The current findings suggest that a one-item measure of self-reported sense of smell may be an effective tool in disgust research.

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Do Valenced Odors and Trait Body Odor Disgust Affect Evaluation of Emotion in Dynamic Faces?

Perception ◽

10.1177/0301006617720831 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 46 (12) ◽

pp. 1412-1426 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Elmeri Syrjänen ◽

Marco Tullio Liuzza ◽

Håkan Fischer ◽

Jonas K. Olofsson

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Facial Expressions ◽

Visual Information ◽

Relevant Information ◽

Body Odor ◽

Disgust Sensitivity ◽

Facial Perception ◽

Related Information ◽

Dynamic Faces ◽

Unpleasant Odor

Disgust is a core emotion evolved to detect and avoid the ingestion of poisonous food as well as the contact with pathogens and other harmful agents. Previous research has shown that multisensory presentation of olfactory and visual information may strengthen the processing of disgust-relevant information. However, it is not known whether these findings extend to dynamic facial stimuli that changes from neutral to emotionally expressive, or if individual differences in trait body odor disgust may influence the processing of disgust-related information. In this preregistered study, we tested whether a classification of dynamic facial expressions as happy or disgusted, and an emotional evaluation of these facial expressions, would be affected by individual differences in body odor disgust sensitivity, and by exposure to a sweat-like, negatively valenced odor (valeric acid), as compared with a soap-like, positively valenced odor (lilac essence) or a no-odor control. Using Bayesian hypothesis testing, we found evidence that odors do not affect recognition of emotion in dynamic faces even when body odor disgust sensitivity was used as moderator. However, an exploratory analysis suggested that an unpleasant odor context may cause faster RTs for faces, independent of their emotional expression. Our results further our understanding of the scope and limits of odor effects on facial perception affect and suggest further studies should focus on reproducibility, specifying experimental circumstances where odor effects on facial expressions may be present versus absent.

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Body odour disgust sensitivity predicts authoritarian attitudes

Royal Society Open Science ◽

10.1098/rsos.171091 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 5 (2) ◽

pp. 171091 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Marco Tullio Liuzza ◽

Torun Lindholm ◽

Caitlin B. Hawley ◽

Marie Gustafsson Sendén ◽

Ingrid Ekström ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Political Psychology ◽

Positive Association ◽

Social Attitudes ◽

Research Topic ◽

Psychology Research ◽

Disgust Sensitivity ◽

Disease Avoidance ◽

Donald Trump ◽

Interpersonal Contact ◽

Body Odour

Authoritarianism has resurfaced as a research topic in political psychology, as it appears relevant to explain current political trends. Authoritarian attitudes have been consistently linked to feelings of disgust, an emotion that is thought to have evolved to protect the organism from contamination. We hypothesized that body odour disgust sensitivity (BODS) might be associated with authoritarianism, as chemo-signalling is a primitive system for regulating interpersonal contact and disease avoidance, which are key features also in authoritarianism. We used well-validated scales for measuring BODS, authoritarianism and related constructs. Across two studies, we found that BODS is positively related to authoritarianism. In a third study, we showed a positive association between BODS scores and support for Donald Trump, who, at the time of data collection, was a presidential candidate with an agenda described as resonating with authoritarian attitudes. Authoritarianism fully explained the positive association between BODS and support for Donald Trump. Our findings highlight body odour disgust as a new and promising domain in political psychology research. Authoritarianism and BODS might be part of the same disease avoidance framework, and our results contribute to the growing evidence that contemporary social attitudes might be rooted in basic sensory functions.

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