“We’re Disgusted With Queers,not Fearful of Them”: The Interrelationships Among Disgust,Gay Men’s Sexual Behavior,and Homonegativity

ABSTRACT

Using a combination of personal reflections, published literature, and original empirical research, we argue that the disgust triggered by gay men’s sexual practices (specifically, anal intercourse) is a critical, though overlooked, contributor to heterosexual men and women’s homonegativity (i.e., negative attitudes and behaviors directed toward men who are or are perceived to be gay). We conclude our article by articulating several directions for future inquiry that we believe will advance current understanding of prejudice and discrimination directed toward gay men.     

Mouthing Disgust and Pleasure in Eating Disorders

ABSTRACT

This article explores the complex sensorial encounters that people with eating disorders have in response to their mouths, food, eating, and embodiment. We argue that relationships to food, perceived primarily in clinical and psychological terms of control and discipline, ignore sensorial and generative dimensions of embodiment and the associated affective agency of hungers, pleasures, and disgust. Through analysis of the filmed performance of Untitled (The Party), we examine how the mouth for people with eating disorders embodies a metaphorical space of disgust, but also pleasure. As a soft, moist bodily opening, the mouth presents a symbolic space that can be filled with sensorial engagements of touch, disgust, pleasure, and taste. It is through the materiality of cream as used in the performance, and Irigaray's morphological mediation of bodily dimensions and language via the mucous touch, that we present new sensorial engagements with eating disorders.     

Contempt and disgust: the emotions of disrespect

Contempt and disgust share a number of features which distinguish them from other hostile emotions: they both present two distinct facets—a nonmoral facet and a moral one; they both imply a negative evaluation of the dispositional kind as well as disrespect towards the target of the feeling; and they trigger avoidance and exclusion action tendencies. However, while sharing a common core, contempt and disgust are in our view distinct emotions, qualified by different cognitive‐motivational features. Contempt is felt exclusively towards human targets, and implies sense of superiority over them, pessimistic feelings about their possibility of betterment, detachment from them, and avoidance driven by detachment; whereas disgust can be directed at a wide range of possible targets, and implies contamination sensitivity, fear of contamination, and fear‐driven avoidance. The differences between contempt and disgust are related to the different kinds of standard against which the target is evaluated, and the different kinds of disrespect engendered by the negative evaluation.     

When Evolution Works Against the Future: Disgust's Contributions to the Acceptance of New Food Technologies

New food technologies have a high potential to transform the current resource‐consuming food system to a more efficient and sustainable one, but public acceptance of new food technologies is rather low. Such an avoidance might be maintained by a deeply preserved risk avoidance system called disgust. In an online survey, participants (N = 313) received information about a variety of new food technology applications (i.e., genetically modified meat/fish, edible nanotechnology coating film, nanotechnology food box, artificial meat/milk, and a synthetic food additive). Every new food technology application was rated according to the respondent's willingness to eat (WTE) it (i.e., acceptance), risk, benefit, and disgust perceptions. Furthermore, food disgust sensitivity was measured using the Food Disgust Scale. Overall, the WTE both gene‐technology applications and meat coated with an edible nanotechnology film were low and disgust responses toward all three applications were high. In full mediation models, food disgust sensitivity predicted the disgust response toward each new food technology application, which in turn influenced WTE them. Effects of disgust responses on the WTE a synthetic food additive were highest for and lowest for the edible nanotechnology coating film compared to the other technologies. Results indicate that direct disgust responses influence acceptance and risk and benefit perceptions of new food technologies. Beyond the discussion of this study, implications for future research and strategies to increase acceptance of new food technologies are discussed.     

高职学生厌学心理调查分析与教育对策

通过对1000名高职学生(样本)调查、问卷显示,约有1/5以上的学生存在厌学问题,这些学生厌倦情绪明显,厌倦学习过程,厌倦扎实学习。在此基础上,提出了实施素质教育,改革高职教学模式,建设校园文化,抓好校风、教风建设等教育对策。     

A Meta-Analytic Review of the Association Between Disgust and Prejudice Toward Gay Men

ABSTRACT

A sizeable number of studies have documented a relationship between heterosexual persons’ experience of disgust (measured as an individual difference variable or induced experimentally) and prejudice toward gay men (i.e., homonegativity). Yet, to date, no one has attempted to meta-analytically review this corpus of research. We address this gap by conducting a meta-analysis of published and unpublished work examining heterosexual men and women’s disgust and their homonegativity toward gay men. Fourteen articles (12 published, two unpublished) containing 17 studies were analyzed (N = 7,322). The average effect size for disgust sensitivity studies was moderate to large (d = 0.64), whereas for disgust induction studies, the effect was large (d = 0.77). No evidence of effect size heterogeneity emerged. Future directions and recommendations for methodological improvements are outlined.     

Evolved Disease-Avoidance Processes and Contemporary Anti-Social Behavior: Prejudicial Attitudes and Avoidance of People with Physical Disabilities

Drawing on evolutionary psychological logic, we describe a model that links evolved mechanisms of disease-avoidance to contemporary prejudices against individuals with physical disabilities. Because contagious diseases were often accompanied by anomalous physical features, humans plausibly evolved psychological mechanisms that respond heuristically to the perception of these features, triggering specific emotions (disgust, anxiety), cognitions (negative attitudes), and behaviors (avoidance). This disease-avoidance system is over-inclusive: Anomalous features that are not due to disease (e.g., limb amputation due to accident) may also activate it, contributing to prejudicial attitudes and behaviors directed toward people with disabilities. This model implies novel hypotheses about contemporary variables that may amplify or reduce disability-based prejudice. We discuss past research within this context. We also present new evidence linking chronic and temporary concerns about disease to implicit negative attitudes toward and behavioral avoidance of disabled others. Discussion focuses on the conceptual and practical implications of this evolutionary approach.     

Disgust and distinction: the case of the jellied eel

Drawing on a series of ethnographic encounters collected while hanging around at a seafood stand in east London, the following article aims to explore the relationship between individual expressions of distaste and the production of class, ethnic and generational forms of distinction. Starting with the visceral expressions of distaste directed towards a seafood stand, the following paragraphs draw on a combination of historical and ethnographic data rendered through a matrix of anthropological, sociological and psychoanalytic theory, to explore the role of everyday ambient experiences and the stratifying processes that cut across the lives of the city's inhabitants. Arguing against purely biological explanations of disgust, the paper explores how social histories and cultural experience inflect gut responses to the sensoria that suffuse urban environments. Moving the focus beyond the social construction of urban sensibilities, the paper goes on to develop an account of culturally inflected forms of distaste, shaping the city and the lives of its inhabitants.     

Psychometric properties and criterion validity of the Perceived Vulnerability to Disease Scale (PVD) in the Spanish population / Propiedades psicométricas y validez de criterio de la escala de Percepción de Vulnerabilidad a la Enfermedad (PVE en población española)

Perceived Vulnerability to Disease may be defined as the beliefs about personal susceptibility to the transmission of infectious diseases and the emotional discomfort associated with the potential disease transmission. To evaluate these beliefs, the Perceived Vulnerability to Disease Scale (PVD) has been used in most studies. The aim of Study 1 was to validate the PVD questionnaire to the Spanish population. The sample was made up of 744 university students from all over Spain. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that the items on the short version of the questionnaire corresponding to an interrelated two-factor model (perceived infectability and germ aversion) showed the best fit of all the tested models. In Study 2, scales to measure antifat attitudes, disgust and negative attitudes towards AIDS were used to analyse the criterion validity of the PVD questionnaire. The sample was made up of 434 university students. It was found that germ aversion was positively related with antifat attitudes, disgust and negative attitudes towards AIDS. In light of these results, we conclude that the short version of the questionnaire has good psychometric properties and can be used by the scientific community to measure Perceived Vulnerability to Disease.