Disgust
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.
Unlike the emotions of fear, anger, and sadness, disgust is associated with a decrease in heart rate (for body-envelope violations) [5][6] and proto-nausea of the stomach (for bodily effluvia).
Disgust may produce specific autonomic responses, such as reduced blood pressure, lowered heart-rate and decreased skin conductance along with changes in respiratory behaviour.
[20] Scientists have conjectured that pregnancy requires the mother to "dial down" her immune system so that the developing embryo won't be attacked.
[8] It also receives visual information from the anterior portion of the ventral superior temporal cortex, where cells have been found to respond to the sight of faces.
Finally, electrically stimulating the anterior insula through implanted electrodes produced sensations in the throat and mouth that were "difficult to stand".
[8] These findings demonstrate the role of the insula in transforming unpleasant sensory input into physiological reactions, and the associated feeling of disgust.
One particular neuropsychological study focused on patient NK who was diagnosed with a left hemisphere infarction involving the insula, internal capsule, putamen and globus pallidus.
[35] The patient showed a reduction in disgust-response on eight categories including food, animals, body products, envelope violation and death.
[45] Furthermore, Sprengelmeyer (1997) found that the brain activation associated with disgust included the insula and part of the gustatory cortex that processes unpleasant tastes and smells.
OCD subjects and healthy volunteers showed activation patterns in response to disgust pictures that differed significantly at the right insula.
[46] With respect to studies using rats, prior research of signs of a conditioned disgust response have been experimentally verified by Grill and Norgren (1978) who developed a systematic test to assess palatability.
[48] Studies have shown that treatments that reduced serotonin availability or that activate the endocannabinoid system can interfere with the expression of a conditioned disgust reaction in rats.
Moreover, lesions of the dorsal and medial raphe nuclei (depleting forebrain serotonin) prevented the establishment of lithium chloride-induced conditioned disgust.
Exposure to bodily excrements that usually elicit disgust reactions in humans, such as feces, semen, or blood, have an impact on primates' feeding preferences.
[57] Overall, primates incorporate various senses in their feeding decisions, with disgust being an adaptive trait that helps them avoid potential parasites and other threats from contaminants.
For example, when grapes are being passed out to chimps and they accidentally step in feces, they almost always take the time to stop and wipe it off even if it means missing out on food.
They found that, compared to non-obese people, obese targets elicited more disgust, more negative attitudes and stereotypes, and a greater desire for a social distance from participants.
When people see an image of abuse, rape, or murder, they often avert their gazes to inhibit the incoming visual stimuli from the photograph just like they would if they saw a decomposing body.
Jonathan Haidt proposed that one's instant judgments about morality are experienced as a "flash of intuition" and that these affective perceptions operate rapidly, associatively, and outside of consciousness.
[69] From this particular finding, it can be suggested that this reduces the experience of disgust and the ensuing threat of psychological impurity diminishes the apparent severity of moral transgressions.
[87] As an effective instrument for reducing motivations for social interaction, disgust can be anticipated to interfere with dehumanization or the maltreatment of persons as less than human.
[86] The emotion disgust has been noted to feature strongly in the public sphere in relation to issues and debates, among other things, regarding anatomy, sex and bioethics.
Leon Kass, a bioethicist, has advocated that "in crucial cases...repugnance is the emotional expression of deep wisdom, beyond reason's power fully to articulate it."
In place of this "politics of disgust", Nussbaum argues for the Harm principle from John Stuart Mill as the proper basis for legislating.
Nussbaum argues the harm principle supports the legal ideas of consent, the Age of majority and privacy and protects citizens.
She contrasts this with the "politics of disgust" which she argues denies citizens humanity and equality before the law on no rational grounds and cause palpable social harm.
Nussbaum identifies disgust as a marker that bigoted, and often merely majoritarian, discourse employs to "place", by diminishment and denigration, a despised minority.
Since there are characteristic facial expressions (the clenched nostrils, the pursed lips)—as Charles Darwin, Paul Ekman, and others have shown—they may be represented with more or less skill in any set of circumstances imaginable.
"[91] His own argument turns largely upon the human capacity to learn how to control, even to suppress, strong and problematic affects and, over time, for entire populations to abandon specific disgust responses.
