The emotional profiling of disgust‐eliciting stimuli: Evidence for primary and complex disgusts

By S. Marzillier, G. Davey. 2004

121 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The present paper reports the results of two studies that used a hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis to categorise the emotional profiles of disgust‐evoking stimuli. Study 1 revealed three clusters of stimuli corresponding to: (1) nondisgust or “disgust‐irrelevant” items, (2) “primary” disgust items containing a range of disgust‐relevant items characterised by their ability to elicit fear of oral incorporation and their animal origin; and (3) “complex” disgusts, consisting mainly of behaviours or activities that are considered to be socially or morally unacceptable. The emotional profiles of these three categories also differed significantly, with “primary” and “complex” disgusts showing higher levels of disgust than the “disgust‐irrelevant” items. However, whereas the “primary” disgusts showed no evidence of elevated ratings on negative emotion scales other than disgust, the “complex” disgusts revealed high scores on all negative emotions in the profile (sadness, contempt, fear, and anger). Study 2 confirmed both the cluster analysis and emotional profile findings from Study 1, and also indicated that males and females did not differ significantly either on the cluster solution itself or the shape of the emotional profile. Female participants, however, did respond more intensively across all relevant negative emotions in the profiles than did males. The advantages of using emotional profiling as a means of categorising disgust stimuli are discussed, as are the implications of these findings for an understanding of the functions of disgust.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/eeb81b8657270ccf26a21bbadbfaba99d8fba085

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In Cognitive Neuroscience

Citations in the corpus

Disgust as a disease-avoidance mechanism. (2009, background): “Moll et al. (2005) found that moral violations (albeit ones with very clear and direct references to core elicitors) resulted in patterns of neural activation that significantly overlapped with those generated by descriptions of core elicitors.”
Contempt: Derogating Others While Keeping Calm (2016, background): “Such events evoke a mixture of negative feelings, such as anger, moral disgust, and contempt (see e.g., Hutcherson & Gross, 2011; Marzillier & Davey, 2004; Simpson, Carter, Anthony, & Overton, 2006).”
Confirming the Three-Factor Structure of the Disgust Scale—Revised in Eight Countries (2009, background): “There is descriptive (Marzillier & Davey, 2004) and experimental (Simpson et al., 2006) evidence that disgust is not a homogenous construct.”
Disgust: evolved function and structure. (2013, background): “…Curtis & Biran, 2001; Curtis et al., 2011; Fessler, Eng, & Navarrete, 2005; Fessler & Navarrete, 2003a; Fleischman & Fessler, 2011; Kelly, 2011; Marzillier & Davey, 2004; Oaten et al., 2009; Olatunji & Sawchuk, 2005; Rozin et al., 2008; Stevenson & Repacholi, 2005; Susskind et al., 2008;…”
DISGUST: CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES, SOCIAL MANIFESTATIONS, AND CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS (2005, background): “However, Marzillier and Davey (2004) conducted hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis to categorize the emotional profiles of disgust–evoking stimuli and found only two clusters of stimuli corresponding to: (1) “primary” disgust items containing a range of disgust–relevant items characterized…”