Disgust

Oscar Gustave Rejlander portraying disgust in plates from Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals

Disgust (Middle French: desgouster, from Latin gustus, 'taste') is an emotional response of rejection or revulsion to something potentially contagious[1] or something considered offensive, distasteful or unpleasant. In The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Charles Darwin wrote that disgust is a sensation that refers to something revolting. Disgust is experienced primarily in relation to the sense of taste (either perceived or imagined), and secondarily to anything which causes a similar feeling by sense of smell, touch, or vision. Musically sensitive people may even be disgusted by the cacophony of inharmonious sounds. Research has continually proven a relationship between disgust and anxiety disorders such as arachnophobia, blood-injection-injury type phobias, and contamination fear related obsessive–compulsive disorder (also known as OCD).[2][3]

Disgust is one of the basic emotions of Robert Plutchik's theory of emotions, and has been studied extensively by Paul Rozin.[4] It invokes a characteristic facial expression, one of Paul Ekman's six universal facial expressions of emotion. Unlike the emotions of fear, anger, and sadness, disgust is associated with a decrease in heart rate.[5]

  1. ^ Badour, Christal L.; Feldner, Matthew T. (July 2018). "The Role of Disgust in Posttraumatic Stress". Journal of Experimental Psychopathology. 9 (3): pr.032813. doi:10.5127/pr.032813.
  2. ^ Husted, D.S.; Shapira, N.A.; Goodman, W.K. (2006). "The neurocircuitry of obsessive–compulsive disorder and disgust". Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry. 30 (3): 389–399. doi:10.1016/j.pnpbp.2005.11.024. PMID 16443315. S2CID 20685000.
  3. ^ Cisler, Josh M.; Olatunji, Bunmi O.; Lohr, Jeffrey M.; Williams, Nathan L. (June 2009). "Attentional bias differences between fear and disgust: Implications for the role of disgust in disgust-related anxiety disorders". Cognition & Emotion. 23 (4): 675–687. doi:10.1080/02699930802051599. PMC 2892866. PMID 20589224.
  4. ^ Young, Molly (27 December 2021). "How Disgust Explains Everything". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 31 December 2021.
  5. ^ Rozin, Paul; Haidt, Jonathan; McCauley, Clark (2018). "Disgust". In Barrett, Lisa Feldman; Lewis, Michael; Haviland-Jones, Jeannette M. (eds.). Handbook of Emotions. Guilford Publications. pp. 815–834. ISBN 978-1-4625-3636-8.