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Emotions have been a long-standing cornerstone of research in social and clinical psychology. Although the systematic examination of emotional processes has yielded a rather comprehensive theoretical and scientific literature, dramatically less empirical attention has been devoted to disgust. In the present article, the nature, experience, and other associated features of disgust are outlined. We also review the domains of disgust and highlight how these domains have expanded over time. The function of disgust in various social constructions, such as cigarette smoking, vegetarianism, and homophobia, is highlighted. Disgust is also becoming increasingly recognized as an influential emotion in the onset, maintenance, and treatment of various phobic states, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and eating disorders. In comparison to the other emotions, disgust offers great promise for future social and clinical research efforts, and prospective studies designed to improve our understanding of disgust are outlined.
The nature, structure, and function of emotions have a rich tradition in the social and clinical psychology literature (Cacioppo & Gardner, 1999). Although emotion theorists have contested over the number of discrete emotional states and their operational definitions (Plutchik, 2001), most agree that emotions are highly influential in organizing thought processes and behavioral tendencies (Izard, 1993; Johnson-Laird & Oatley, 1992). Emotions have been a popular subject of basic and applied research over the last several decades. Closer inspection of the extant research base reveals an interesting preference for the systematic examination of certain emotions over others. One such "forgotten emotion" in the experimental literature has been disgust (McNally, 2002; Phillips, Senior, Fahy, & David, 1998; Woody & Teachman, 2000).
Disgust has been identified as one of the basic emotions, recognizable across diverse cultures. Culture, in turn, largely shapes what an individual or society deems to be "disgusting." Developmentally, disgust tendencies change over time. Learned experiences account for considerable individual differences in either the inoculation or vulnerability to stimuli that elicit disgust reactions. Experimentally, disgust is relatively easy to elicit under controlled laboratory settings without risking significant ethical concerns (Rozin, Lowery, & Ebert, 1994). Although other primary emotional states, such as fear, anger, and sadness, have an established research tradition, less empirical interest has been invested in disgust (Royzman & Sabini, 2001). Does there exist an aversion to the study of disgust?
To illustrate the...