Disgust has Arrived

This paper by Richard McNally is not actually a study. Its a review which is
intended to explore some of the themes brought up in previous studies.

Phobias

- One of these themes is the role of disgust in phobias such as arachnophobia

Spiders

- Spiders are feared by many, but only 0.1% of spider varieties pose a threat
to humans. Humans pose a much greater threat to spiders than they do to us.
Spider phobia is often classified as a biologically prepared fear, but its
hard to see why they would trigger an evolved defence system in humans as
though they were some sort of predator.

Adaptive Conservatism

- Some theorists invoke the principle of adaptive conservatism, based on the

idea that its better to be safe than sorry. People can make 2 types of
mistakes when encountering spiders.

- They can fearfully avoid encounters with spiders that are actually harmless
(a false positive or Type I error), or they may fail to avoid one of the rare
spiders whose bite is fatal (a miss or Type II error).

- Because a Type II error is much more serious than a Type I error, it is

presumably adaptive for people to be conservative and steer clear of all
spiders, just in case.

Opportunity Costs

- The problem with this explanation is that it doesnt factor in opportunity

costs. If you do whatever it takes to avoid getting killed by spiders, you lose
many opportunities for positive experiences.

- There are often substantial costs associated with spider avoidance - some
spider phobics go to great lengths to avoid encountering spiders such as
refusing to go outdoors.

- Its unlikely that it would have been adaptive for our ancestors to fear
entering areas likely to contain spiders, as they would incur big opportunity
costs such as failing to obtain food, which is a much bigger survival risk.

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Disgust Reaction

- It has also been suggested that phobic avoidance of spiders and other small
animals is motivated by disgust-related aversion towards disease, rather
than fear of getting attacked. Research has shown that disgust sensitivity is
in fact linked to spider avoidance.

- But it seems that not all animals that are frequently objects of disgust
commonly carry disease - slugs and spiders for instance. On the other hand,
there are other disease-carrying animals such as mosquitoes which are seen
as irritating, but rarely viewed with disgust.

- Although people may avoid spiders because they are disgusting, the claim
that this avoidance arises because of disease avoidance may simply be a
post-hoc rationalisation for an aversion we find difficult to explain.

- These explanations all assume that a preparedness to fear spiders is an

evolved adaptation, but not all human behaviours and tendencies need an
adaptive explanation, and the aversion may have developed through
mechanisms other than increasing fitness in our ancestors.

Measures of Disgust

Physiological

- A number of studies have used physiological or behavioural means to

measure disgust and disgust-related avoidance.

- De Jong, Peters, & Vanderhallen (2002) used a physiological measure

called Facial Electromyography a technique that measures muscle
activity by detecting and amplifying the tiny electrical impulses that are
generated by muscle fibres when they contract. They specifically measured
3 muscles associated with disgust or negative emotions.

o Corrugator - increased activity during negative emotions

o Levator labii - increased activity specific to disgust
o Zygomatic - promising index of disgust

- They found that spider phobics had heightened disgust sensitivity - greater
response to disgust elicitors - in addition to fear, which supports the idea
that phobias are often at least partly disgust-based.

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Behavioural

- A common behavioural method of measuring disgust is asking subjects to

eat a cookie after a worm has touched it. Koch et al found that 82% of
participants scoring high on a measure of blood-injection-injury phobia
refused to eat a cookie touched by a worm, whereas only 51% of non-phobic
participants refused to eat it, suggesting greater disgust sensitivity in those
with a phobia which also supports the idea that phobias are often disgust-
based.

Countervailing Incentives

- The problem with such behavioural methods for testing hypotheses about
disgust sensitivity is that researchers dont consider countervailing
incentives.

- In other words, why should anyone eat a cookie after a worm has just
crawled all over it? The only reasons for doing so are hunger and a desire
to please the experimenter. Seeing as participants generally arent starving,
eating contaminated cookies in the lab may tell us more about their
obedience tendencies than about their disgust sensitivity.

- The importance of countervailing incentives such as hunger is most apparent

in cannibalism. Not many people eat dead humans, and the emotion of
disgust is probably involved in this aversion.

- Most documented cases involve survival cannibalism in which starving

people, such as mariners lost at sea, have eaten their dead companions. Even
though they feel disgust with its associated tendency to withdraw, their
hunger creates a countervailing tendency to approach which may eventually
win out. Instances of survival cannibalism thus provide examples of how
conflicting approach and avoidance tendencies must be simultaneously
assessed when we measure disgust sensitivity.

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Strengths

- One of the strengths of the paper so far is that it goes against the tradition
that derives phobias solely or mainly from fear, by acknowledging that
phobias may be based on disgust.

- The disgust-based nature of spider phobias may explain research

demonstrating a parallel between the age of onset of spider phobia and the
age at which children start to display disgust responses.

- It may also explain the observation that spider-phobic individuals have

difficulty articulating what they fear, as a key feature of objects related to
core disgust is that they are intrinsically offensive.

Strengths 2

- Disgust based phobia also fits in with a study by:

- Ware, Jain, Burgess, & Davey (1994) which found correlations between
disgust sensitivity and animal phobias towards revulsion animals.

- Davey (1994) which found that number of phobias an individual has is

positively correlated with disgust sensitivity levels, with females scoring
higher on both.

- Lumley & Melamed (1992) - Disgust facial expressions are more

characteristic of blood-injection-injury phobia than fearful expressions.

- The role of disgust may extend beyond specific phobias to social phobia as
well. While diagnostic classifications such as DSM-5 emphasise fear, the
reactions of social phobics may equally be based on disgust, as a key theme
in social phobia is a perceived negative evaluation or rejection of the self by
other people.

- Power & Dalgleish have suggested that social phobics feel shame in social
situations, a combination of fear and disgust, and that severe instances of the
phobia may involve a coupling of these two basic emotions within the
SPAARS system, such that they continually reactivate each other.

- Whether or not a phobia is based on fear, disgust, or both may have

implications for its treatment. For instance, there may be different
patterns of learning in relation to different basic emotions and this may
need to be accounted for in behavioural or cognitive-behavioural therapy.
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Strengths 3

- Another strength of the paper is that it points out how not all aspects of the
human phenotype are necessarily evolved adaptations, which researchers
with a strong inclination towards evolutionary psychology sometimes seem
to forget.

- Some features originate as neutral architectural by-products (spandrels) of

other, naturally selected features (adaptations). Blushing, for example, can
subserve interpersonal communication, but this function does not explain
why blood is red.

- Animals such as slugs are something of an aesthetic similarity to mucus

and faeces. Rather than being an evolved adaptation, the disgust felt
towards such animals which arent harmful and which arent that
contaminating may perhaps be a by-product of an adaptation to feel disgust
towards mucus or faeces.

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(Disgust) sensitivity to contagion was the best predictor of elicited fear during spider
imagery.

Spider phobia reflects a fear of involuntary contact with a disgusting (potentially

contaminating) stimulus.