Although prior work on ethical decision-making has examined the direct impact of magnitude of consequences as well as the direct impact of emotions on ethical judgments, the current research examines the interaction of these two constructs. Building on previous research finding disgust to have a varying impact on ethical judgments depending on the specific behavior being evaluated, we investigate how disgust, as well as happiness and sadness, moderates the effect of magnitude of consequences on an individual’s judgments of (...) another person’s unethical behavior. Specifically, we propose and find that because disgust and happiness are both associated with more heuristic-based processing, they both lead to a stronger reliance on the magnitude of consequences when forming ethical judgments. In contrast, because sad and neutral emotional states are associated with more systematic processing, they both result in a weaker reliance on the magnitude of consequences. As such, the effect of magnitude of consequences on judgments of unethical behaviors is stronger when individuals making the judgments are experiencing disgust or happiness versus sadness or a neutral state. This research shows that ethical judgment severity is contingent on individual-level factors, particularly the current emotional state being experienced by the individual, interacting with magnitude of consequences to impact the ethical decision-making process. (shrink)

This paper calls into question the idea that moral disgust is usefully regarded as a form of genuine disgust. This hypothesis is questionable even if, as some have argued, the spread of moral norms through a community makes use of signaling mechanisms that are central to core disgust. The signaling system is just one part of disgust, and may well be completely separable from it. Moreover, there is plausibly a significant difference between the cognitive (...) scientist’s concept of an emotion and the everyday notion of that emotion. Finally, even if, as this paper contests, some form of disgust were directly elicited by the moral wrongness of certain kinds of behavior, research on the socio-moral elicitors of the disgust mechanism would still be unlikely to shed much direct light on the nature or content of morality. (shrink)

This paper calls into question the idea that moral disgust is usefully regarded as a form of genuine disgust. This hypothesis is questionable even if, as some have argued, the spread of moral norms through a community makes use of signaling mechanisms that are central to core disgust. The signaling system is just one part of disgust, and may well be completely separable from it. Moreover, there is plausibly a significant difference between the cognitive (...) scientist’s concept of an emotion and the everyday notion of that emotion. Finally, even if, as this paper contests, some form of disgust were directly elicited by the moral wrongness of certain kinds of behavior, research on the socio-moral elicitors of the disgust mechanism would still be unlikely to shed much direct light on the nature or content of morality. (shrink)

Disgust is often believed to have no special moral relevance. However, there are situations where disgust and similar feelings like revulsion, repugnance, or abhorrence function as the expression of a very strong moral disapproval that cannot fully be captured by argument. I call this kind of disgust moral disgust.Although it is always in principle possible to justify our moral disgust by explaining what it is in a given situation or action that (...) disgusts us, the feeling of disgust often comes first and either draws our attention to the fact that there is something wrong in the first place, or makes us aware that the kind of wrongness we are dealing with surpasses what can be accounted for by established moral theory. In both cases moral disgust serves an important purpose for an adequate moral evaluation of diverse situations and the actions from which they result. (shrink)

Based on the empirical findings correlating disgust with conservatism, most disgust scholars have fed arguments for its moral unreliability and concluded with moral condemnation of this emotion. In this paper, I will examine common arguments about whether relying on disgust in the moral domain is to be considered good or bad. I will problematize the suggestion that we are justified in firmly believing that disgust is an ethically «dumb» – or an ethically «smart» (...) – emotion. It rather seems that moral disgust can be rational or irrational, pro-social or anti-social, liberal or conservative depending on the eliciting contexts, and that such case-by-case conclusions rely on additional meta-ethical premises. (shrink)

Psychological research has been discovering a number of puzzling features of morality and moral cognition recently.2 Zhong & Liljenquist (2006) found that when people are asked to think about an unethical deed or recall one they themselves have committed in the past, issues of physical cleanliness become salient. Zhong & Liljenquist cleverly designate this phenomenon the “Macbeth Effect,” and it takes some interesting forms. For instance, reading a story describing an immoral deed increased people’s desire for products related to (...) cleansing, like a shower soap, disinfectants, or antiseptic wipes. Moreover, Zhong & Liljenquist found that cleaning one’s hands after describing a past unethical deed actually reduced moral emotions such as guilt and shame. So much so that those who did “wash away their sins” were less likely than other participants to help out a.. (shrink)

The philosophical debate over disgust and its role in moral discourse has focused on disgust’s epistemic status: can disgust justify judgments of moral wrongness? Or is it misplaced in the moral domain—irrelevant at best, positively distorting at worst? Correspondingly, empirical research into disgust has focused on its role as a cause or amplifier of moral judgment, seeking to establish how and when disgust either causes us to morally condemn actions, or strengthens (...) our pre-existing tendencies to condemn certain actions. Both of these approaches to disgust are based on a set of assumptions that I call, in what follows, the evidential model of disgust. This paper proposes an alternative model, which I call the response model. Instead of looking at disgust as a cause and justification of judgments of moral wrongness, I will argue that disgust is better understood as a response to wrongness. More precisely, I argue that disgust is a response to norm violations, and that it is a fitting response insofar as norm violations are potentially contagious and therefore pose a threat to the stability and maintenance of norms. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend a novel skeptical view about moral disgust. I argue that much recent discussion of moral disgust neglects an important ontological question: is there a distinctive psychological state of moral disgust that is differentiable from generic disgust, and from other psychological states? I investigate the ontological question and propose two conditions that any aspiring account of moral disgust must satisfy: it must be a genuine form of (...) class='Hi'>disgust, and it must be genuinely moral. Next, I examine two prominent accounts of moral disgust by John Kekes and Victor Kumar and argue that neither successfully establishes the existence of genuinely moral disgust: Kekes’ account does not satisfy the second condition, and Kumar’s view does not meet the first. I claim that an important general lesson can be drawn from my critiques of Kekes’ and Kumar’s accounts: to establish the existence of moral disgust, one must provide unequivocal evidence that genuinely moral disgust, not generic disgust or anger, is being elicited in response to relevant moral violations. I conclude by considering why we ought to be skeptical about the general prospect of giving a positive answer to the ontological question, given the available evidence. (shrink)

People often appear to conflate anger and disgust, seemingly using expressions of both emotions interchangeably in response to moral violations. Yet, anger and moral disgust differ in their antecedents and consequences. These empirical observations are associated with two broad theoretical perspectives: one describes expressions of moral disgust as metaphors for anger, whereas the other describes moral disgust as functionally distinct from anger. Both accounts have received empirical support from separate and seemingly inconsistent (...) literatures. The present study seeks to resolve this inconsistency by focusing on the different ways moral emotions have been measured. We formalise three theoretical models of moral emotions: one in which expressions of disgust are purely associated with anger (but not physiological disgust), one in which disgust and anger are fully separated and have distinct functions, and an integrative model that accommodates both metaphorical use in language and distinctive function. We test these models on responses to moral violations (four studies; N = 1608). Our results suggest that moral disgust has distinct functions, but that expressions of moral disgust are sometimes used to convey moralistic anger. These findings have implications for the theoretical status and measurement of moral emotions. (shrink)

I argue that much philosophical discussion of moral disgust suffers from two ambiguities: first, it is not clear whether arguments for the moral authority of disgust apply to disgust as a consequence of moral evaluations or instead to disgust as a moralizing emotion; second, it is not clear whether the word ‘moral’ is used in a normative or in a descriptive sense. This lack of clarity generates confusion between ‘fittingness’ and ‘appropriateness’ of (...) disgust. I formulate three conditions that arguments for the moral authority of disgust need—but typically fail—to satisfy, in order to avoid (1) circularity, (2) the naturalistic fallacy, and (3) redundancy. These conditions are, respectively, (1) the identification of the direction of the causal relation between disgust and moral evaluation, (2) a demonstration that disgust is ‘fitting’ to morally relevant properties, and (3) a demonstration that disgust is ‘appropriate’ when elicited by these morally relevant properties. I will also suggest that, regardless of whether an argument for the moral authority of disgust can be made, it would be better to avoid the rather obscure term ‘moral disgust’. (shrink)

Recently, many critics have argued that disgust is a morally harmful emotion, and that it should play no role in our moral and legal reasoning. Here we defend disgust as a morally beneficial moral capacity. We believe that a variety of liberal norms have been inappropriately imported into both moral psychology and ethical studies of disgust: disgust has been associated with conservative authors, values, value systems, and modes of moral reasoning that are (...) seen as inferior to the values and moral emotions that are endorsed by liberal critics. Here we argue that the meta-ethical assumptions employed by the critics of disgust are highly contentious and in some cases culture bound. Given this, we should avoid adopting simplified meta-ethical positions in experimental moral psychology, as these can skew the design and interpretation of experiments, and blind us to the potential value of moral disgust harnessed in the service of liberal ends. (shrink)

ABSTRACT It has been argued that so-called moral disgust is either not really moral or not really disgust. I maintain that sceptics are wrong: there is a distinct emotional response best described as ‘moral disgust’. I offer an account of its constitutive features.

Aiming to circumvent metaphor-prone properties of natural language, Chapman, Kim, Susskind, and Anderson (2009) recently reported evidence for morally induced activation of the levator labii region (manifest as an upper lip raise and a nose wrinkle), also implicated in responding to bad tastes and contaminants. Here we point out that the probative value of this type of evidence rests on a particular (and heavily contested) account of facial movements, one which holds them to be “expressions” or automatic read-outs of internal (...) states. We also observe a largely neglected difference between morally induced disgust and moral disgust proper, arguing that data such as Chapman et al.’s (2009) provide evidence only for the former. (shrink)

Research on moral disgust suffers from a methodological bias. The bulk of such investigation focuses almost exclusively on the operation of moral disgust within the psychology of a single individual, or as involving an interaction between two people. This leads to certain questions being salient, while other phenomena, which emerge only at the level of an entire community or society, are largely hidden from view. The present paper explains and defends a perspective that emphasizes the role (...) of moral disgust within a community. It also illustrates the usefulness of this perspective by applying it to three quite distinct accounts of moral disgust: Alexandra Plakias’s response model of moral disgust, David Pizarro’s idea that moral disgust is part of a behavioral immune system, and Jesse Prinz’s self‐consciously simple form of moral sentimentalism. (shrink)

Emergency situations require individuals to make important changes in their behavior. In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, official recommendations to avoid the spread of the virus include costly behaviors such as self-quarantining or drastically diminishing social contacts. Compliance (or lack thereof) with these recommendations is a controversial and divisive topic, and lay hypotheses abound regarding what underlies this divide. This paper investigates which cognitive, moral, and emotional traits separate people who comply with official recommendations from those who don't. (...) In four studies (three pre-registered) on both U.S. and French samples, we found that individuals' self-reported compliance with official recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic was partly driven by individual differences in moral values, disgust sensitivity, and psychological reactance. We discuss the limitations of our studies and suggest possible applications in the context of health communication. (shrink)

"What is the significance of our gut feelings? Can they disclose our deep selves or point to a shared human nature? The phenomenon of perpetrator disgust provides a uniquely insightful perspective by which to consider such questions. Across time and cultures, some individuals exhibit signs of distress while committing atrocities. They experience nausea, convulse, and vomit. Do such bodily responses reflect a moral judgment, a deep-seated injunction against atrocity? What conclusions can we draw about the relationship of our (...) gut feelings to human nature and moral frameworks? Drawing on a broad range of historical examples as well as the latest scholarship from the philosophical and scientific study of emotions, this book explores the relationship of cognition and emotion through the lens of perpetrator disgust. Considering a range of interpretations of this phenomenon, it becomes evident that gut feelings do not carry a straightforward and transparent intentionality in themselves, nor do they motivate any core, specific response; they are templates that can embody a broad range of values and morals. Using this core insight, the book proposes a contextual understanding of emotions, by which an agent's environment shapes their available hermeneutic equipment-concepts, categories, names-that individuals rely on to make sense of their emotions and navigate the world"--. (shrink)

Is disgust morally valuable? The answer to that question turns, in large part, on what we can do to shape disgust for the better. But this cultivation question has received surprisingly little attention in philosophical debates. To address this deficiency, this article examines empirical work on disgust and emotion regulation. This research reveals that while we can exert some control over how we experience disgust, there’s little we can do to substantively change it at a more (...) fundamental level. These empirical insights have revisionary implications both for debates about disgust’s moral value and for our understanding of agency and moral development more generally. (shrink)

Much recent research has sought to uncover the neural basis of moral judgment. However, it has remained unclear whether "moral judgments" are sufficiently homogenous to be studied scientifically as a unified category. We tested this assumption by using fMRI to examine the neural correlates of moral judgments within three moral areas: (physical) harm, dishonesty, and (sexual) disgust. We found that the judgment ofmoral wrongness was subserved by distinct neural systems for each of the different (...) class='Hi'>moral areas and that these differences were much more robust than differences in wrongness judgments within a moral area. Dishonest, disgusting, and harmful moral transgression recruited networks of brain regions associated with mentalizing, affective processing, and action understanding, respectively. Dorsal medial pFC was the only region activated by all scenarios judged to be morally wrong in comparison with neutral scenarios. However, this region was also activated by dishonest and harmful scenarios judged not to be morally wrong, suggestive of a domain-general role that is neither peculiar to nor predictive of moral decisions. These results suggest that moral judgment is not a wholly unified faculty in the human brain, but rather, instantiated in dissociable neural systems that are engaged differentially depending on the type of transgression being judged. (shrink)

Recent empirical research seems to show that emotions play a substantial role in moral judgment. Perhaps the most important line of support for this claim focuses on disgust. A number of philosophers and scientists argue that there is adequate evidence showing that disgust significantly influences various moral judgments. And this has been used to support or undermine a range of philosophical theories, such as sentimentalism and deontology. I argue that the existing evidence does not support such (...) arguments. At best it suggests something rather different: that moral judgment can have a minor emotive function, in addition to a substantially descriptive one. (shrink)

Despite the wealth of recent work implicating disgust as an emotion central to human morality, the nature of the causal relationship between disgust and moral judgment remains unclear. We distinguish between three related claims regarding this relationship, and argue that the most interesting claim (that disgust is a moralizing emotion) is the one with the least empirical support.

Disgust is not a pleasant subject. It is perhaps partly for this reason that it has not been much discussed in philosophical literature, or, indeed anywhere else. Disgust has considerable moral significance however, and appreciating its significance will illuminate the present state of our morality. One may be led to this view by reflecting on several recent works on pollution. The pollution in question, of course, is not of the air, soil, or water, but that of people (...) who have violated moral taboos of their society'. (shrink)

People can be disgusted by the concrete and by the abstract -- by an object they find physically repellent or by an ideology or value system they find morally abhorrent. Different things will disgust different people, depending on individual sensibilities or cultural backgrounds. In _Yuck!_, Daniel Kelly investigates the character and evolution of disgust, with an emphasis on understanding the role this emotion has come to play in our social and moral lives. Disgust has recently been (...) riding a swell of scholarly attention, especially from those in the cognitive sciences and those in the humanities in the midst of the "affective turn." Kelly proposes a cognitive model that can accommodate what we now know about disgust. He offers a new account of the evolution of disgust that builds on the model and argues that expressions of disgust are part of a sophisticated but largely automatic signaling system that humans use to transmit information about what to avoid in the local environment. He shows that many of the puzzling features of moral repugnance tinged with disgust are by-products of the imperfect fit between a cognitive system that evolved to protect against poisons and parasites and the social and moral issues on which it has been brought to bear. Kelly's account of this emotion provides a powerful argument against invoking disgust in the service of moral justification. (shrink)

Are verbal reports of disgust in moral situations specific indicators of the concept of disgust, or are they used metaphorically to refer to anger? In this experiment, participants read scenarios describing a violation of a norm either about the use of the body (bodily moral) or about harm and rights (socio-moral). They then expressed disgust and anger on verbal scales, and through facial expression endorsement measures. The use of disgust words in the socio- (...) class='Hi'>moral condition was largely predicted by anger words and only secondarily by disgust faces, whereas in the bodily moral condition the use of disgust words was predicted to a similar extent by disgust faces and anger words. Angry faces, however, never predicted disgust words independently of anger words. These results support a middle-ground position in which disgust words concerning socio-moral violations are not entirely a metaphor for anger, but bear some relationship to other representations of disgust. In the case of socio-moral violations, however, the use of disgust language is more strongly related to anger language, and less strongly to facial representations of disgust than in the case of bodily moral violations. (shrink)

Harm reduction has been advocated to address a diverse range of public health concerns. The moral justification of harm reduction is usually presumed to be consequentialist because the goal of harm reduction is to reduce the harmful health consequences of risky behaviors, such as substance use. Harm reduction is contrasted with an abstinence model whose goal is to eradicate or reduce the prevalence of such behaviors. The abstinence model is often thought to be justified by ‘deontological’ considerations: it is (...) claimed that many risky behaviors are morally unacceptable, and therefore that we have a moral obligation to recommend abstinence. Because harm reduction is associated with a consequentialist justification and the abstinence model is associated with a deontological justification, the potential for a deontological justification of harm reduction has been overlooked. This paper addresses this gap. It argues that the moral duty to protect autonomy and dignity that has been advocated in other areas of medical ethics also justifies the public health policy of harm reduction. It offers two examples—the provision of supervised injection sites and the Housing First policy to address homelessness—to illustrate the argument. (shrink)

This book provides an introduction to the major findings, challenges and debates regarding disgust as a moral emotion, and brings together scholarship from multiple disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, anthropology and law.

Distinguishing between changing and controlling our disgust responses helps us better understand the ways in which disgust can be morally valuable.

Jerome and John Chrysostom explored the disgust and revulsion that people often feel when confronted with the suffering of another human being. Theyattempted morally to reform their listeners by showing them that they were just as vulnerable as those whom they disparaged, and by breaking down false barriers between the self and other. Jerome presented graphic details of one woman’s ministry to the sick and poor, while Chrysostom criticized the aloofspectator who encouraged the sick and poor to perform. (...) class='Hi'>Disgust was thereby re-conceived as an inappropriate response to human suffering. (shrink)

Our understanding of human morality would benefit from an integrated interdisciplinary approach, built on the assumption that human beings are multidimensional unities with real, irreducible, and mutually interdependent spiritual, relational, emotional, rational, and physiological aspects. We could integrate relevant information from neurobiological, psychosocial, and theological perspectives, avoiding unnecessary reductionism and naturalism. This approach is modeled by addressing the particular limited role of disgust in morality. Psychosocial research reveals disgust as a universal emotion that enables evaluation and regulation of (...) certain moral behaviors and is involved in cultural identity. Theologically, many religious traditions, including the Judeo‐Christian, use disgust in conjunction with moral codes designed to preserve purity and communal identity as the people of God. The concept of natural moral law suggests that morality is embodied in human nature. Neurobiology is beginning to trace the neural circuitry involved in disgust and in moral evaluation, suggesting that emotions are a necessary basis for moral judgment and revealing intriguing relationships between disgust, morality, and other aspects of the psyche. Several problems that arise within these disciplines and at their intersections are identified. Extension of the model to other aspects of human morality would further illuminate our understanding of morality without sacrificing its complexity and richness. (shrink)

Much research has explored behaviours that are linked with disgust sensitivity. Few studies, however, have been devoted to understanding how fixed or variable disgust sensitivity is. We therefore aimed to examine whether disgust sensitivity can change with the environment by repeatedly testing students whose environment was not changing as well as student cadets undergoing intensive training at an army camp. We found that an increase in the perceived harshness of the environment was associated with a decrease in (...) pathogen disgust sensitivity. Our results support the idea that disgust sensitivity is malleable depending on the environment. More specifically, we propose that in a harsh environment, where survival may be more difficult, pathogen disgust sensitivity may decrease to allow the consumption of available resources. (shrink)

In two very influential papers from 2008, Tamar Gendler introduced the concept of “alief” to describe the mental state one is in when acting in ways contrary to their consciously professed beliefs. For example, if asked to eat what they know is fudge, but shaped into the form of dog feces, they will hesitate, and behave in a manner that would be consistent with the belief that the fudge is really poop. They alieve that it is disgusting, while they believe (...) it is not. This paper investigates laughter from self-proclaimed egalitarian, tolerant folk, in response to oppressive jokes that might fit the alief-model. If I merely alieve the content of a joke at which I laugh, will that constitute morally exculpating reasons for such laughter? And what else might it imply? This paper will provide insights at the intersections of humor studies, ethics, epistemology, phenomenology, and the philosophy of mind, all while being moderately and appropriately amusing. (shrink)

Among other things, Nietzsche considers himself a psychologist, and many of his ideas about human behaviors, dispositions, and attitudes are empirical and falsifiable. As readers of Nietzsche, we should hope that he got some of his psychological facts right. I agree with Joshua Knobe and Brian Leiter when they argue that "neglect of Nietzsche in moral psychology is no longer an option for those philosophers who accept that moral psychology should be grounded in real psychology."1 This article aims (...) at furthering this project by exploring what Nietzsche thinks about disgust.2 However, the aim is to show not only that recent studies on disgust support many of Nietzsche's observations but also that... (shrink)

본 논문의 목적은 역겨움에 관한 최근의 심리학 및 철학적 연구들을 바탕으로 도덕적 역겨움의 기원과 기능, 그리고 그것의 규범 윤리학적 함의를 탐구하는 것이다. 역겨움이 도덕성에 큰 영향을 준다는 사실을 받아들이는 이들은 많지만, 그 영향이 정확히 무엇이고 어떻게 생겨났는지, 그리고 어떤 한계를 지니는지에 대한 통합적 이해를 시도하는 이들은 드물다. 우리는 하이트의 도덕 기반 이론, 켈리의 얽힘 논제, 그래이의 쌍 도덕 이론을 중심으로 독성 회피 반응으로 시작된 역겨움이 어떻게 도덕적 역겨움으로 확장되었는지를 검토한다. 그 결과 이러한 역겨움의 이행 과정에 대해 하나의 설득력 있는 진화론적 (...) 이해에 도달한다. 또한 우리는 도덕적 역겨움에 대한 과학적 사실들이 규범 윤리학적 논의와 어떻게 연결될 수 있는지를 탐구한다. 이 과정에서 우리는 첫째, 도덕 기반론자와 쌍 도덕론자 사이의 논쟁에 대한 새로운 해법을 제시한다. 그것은 도덕적 역겨움이 작동했던 집단 규모의 통시적 차이가 두 이론을 양립가능하게 만든다는 것이다. 둘째, 우리는 도덕적 역겨움이나 위해 지각에 근거한 규범 윤리학이 부적절할 수밖에 없는 이유들을 제시한다. 이런 논증을 통해 우리는 역겨움의 도덕적 지위에 관한 더 깊은 이해에 도달하고자 한다. (shrink)

In his book Yuck!: The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust, Daniel Kelly synthesizes a growing body of research on disgust and briefly explores the philosophical role of the emotion. This paper presents arguments for the position that disgust should not be considered a source of moral knowledge, a position that Kelly suggests but fails to illustrate. The paper also explores implications of this view, specifically concerning the ways we should seek to manipulate our (...) class='Hi'>disgust reactions in order to improve moral reasoning. (shrink)

Disgust seems to play an important role in moral judgment. However, it is unclear whether the role of disgust in moral judgment is limited to certain kinds of moral domains (versus many) and/or certain types of disgust (versus many). To clarify these questions, we conducted a multilevel meta-analysis (k = 512; N = 72,443) on relations between trait disgust sensitivity and moral judgment (disgust-immorality association). Main analyses revealed a significant overall mean (...) disgust-immorality association (r =.23). Additionally, moderator analyses revealed significant specificity in disgust type and moral domain (grounded in Moral Foundations Theory): effects were stronger for (a) sexual disgust compared to pathogen disgust, (b) sanctity moral judgments compared to other domains of moral judgments, and (c) sexual-sanctity associations compared to other disgust type-moral domain pairings. (shrink)

Suppose that disgust can provide evidence of moral wrongdoing. What account of disgust might make sense of this? A recent and promising theory is the social contagion view, proposed by Alexandra Plakias. After criticizing both its descriptive and normative claims, I draw two conclusions. First, we should question the wisdom of drawing so straight a line from biological poisons and pathogens to social counterparts. Second, we don’t need to explain the evidential value of disgust by appealing (...) to what the response tracks. These lessons point toward an alternative: namely, that disgust is a moral heuristic. On the heuristic view, disgust is a trigger for the subconscious use of a particular rule: I show how this view fits with a plausible hypothesis about the social function of disgust, and then apply it to Leon Kass’s famous use of repugnance to criticize cloning. (shrink)

Moral emotions are evolved mechanisms that function in part to optimize social relationships. We discuss two moral emotions— disgust and the “cuteness response”—which modulate social-engagement motives in opposite directions, changing the degree to which the eliciting entity is imbued with mental states (i.e., mentalized). Disgust-inducing entities are hypo-mentalized (i.e., dehumanized); cute entities are hyper-mentalized (i.e., “humanized”). This view of cuteness—which challenges the prevailing view that cuteness is a releaser of parental instincts (Lorenz, 1950/1971)—explains (a) the broad (...) range of affiliative behaviors elicited by cuteness, (b) the marketing of cuteness to children (by toy makers and animators) to elicit play, and (c) the apparent ease and frequency with which cute things are anthropomorphized. (shrink)

The emotion of disgust is suggested to be an adaptation that evolved to keep us away from sources of infection. Therefore, individuals from populations with greater pathogen stress should have a greater disgust sensitivity. However, current evidence for a positive relationship between disgust sensitivity and the intensity of infectious diseases in the environment is limited. We tested whether disgust and contamination sensitivity changed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Disgust was assessed in 984 women in (...) 2017 and 633 women in 2020 by a set of photographs depicting sources of infection and Pathogen and Moral of Three-Domain Disgust Scale. Further, contamination sensitivity among participants in two waves was measured by Contamination Obsessions and Washing Compulsions Subscale of Padua Inventory. State anxiety was measured with the Polish adaptation of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory only during the second wave of data collection. Women from the COVID-19 pandemic group assessed the photographs depicting sources of infection as more disgusting, scoring higher on Padua Inventory, but lower on Moral Disgust Domain as compared to women from before the pandemic. In addition, anxiety levels during pandemic positively correlated with scores from Pathogen Disgust Domain, Padua Inventory, and the ratings of the photographs. The participants of the study scored higher in state anxiety than the norms determined for the Polish population. Summarizing, we present evidence for differences in individual levels of disgust sensitivity in relation to pathogen stress, supporting the idea that disgust evolved to serve as protection from pathogens. (shrink)