On the limits of the relation of disgust to judgments of immorality

Two correlational studies (ns = 400; 90) examined the association of judgments of immorality and disgust (hypothesized in much current research and theory). Across 40 scenarios in Study 1, immorality was positively correlated with negative emotions, especially anger. With anger partialed, disgust was significantly, but weakly, correlated with immorality, r (38) = .22, p <.05. Study 2 asked whether the immorality-disgust correlation is due to a confound: immoral events often include elements implicitly or explicitly implying pathogens, such as blood or semen. Across 22 scenarios, those implying pathogens were associated with disgust, but those without pathogens, whether moral or immoral, rarely were. We propose that the relation between disgust and immorality is largely coincidental, resulting from (a) using the word disgust to express anger with or even dislike of immoral acts and (b) the presence of incidental elements capable of eliciting disgust

Individual differences in processing emotional images after reading disgusting and neutral sentences

The present study examined the extent to which Event Related Potentials (ERPs) evoked by disgusting, threatening and neutral photographic images were influenced by disgust propensity, disgust sensitivity and attentional control following exposure to disgusting information. Emotional cognition was manipulated by instructing participants to remember either disgusting or neutral sentences; participants in both groups then viewed emotional images while ERPs were recorded. Disgust propensity was associated with a reduced Late Positive Potential (LPP) gap between threatening and neutral stimuli (an effect driven by a rise in the LPP for neutral images) but only amongst individuals who were exposed to disgusting sentences. The typical LPP increase for disgust over neutral was reduced by attentional shifting capacity but only for individuals who were not previously exposed to disgust. There was also a persistent occipital shifted late positivity that was enhanced for disgust for the entire LPP window and was independent of exposure. Results suggest that emotion specific ERP effects can emerge within the broad unpleasant emotional category in conjunction with individual differences and prior emotional exposure. These results have important implications for the ways in which the perception of emotion is impacted by short term cognitive influences and longer term individual differences