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The feeling of disgust, and where it comes from
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- wombatmobile 6y agoTFA uses the terms "disgust" and "moral repugnance", without defining them, as if we all know and agree what they are, then "discusses" their historical cultural aetiological development without evidence. This is story telling.
- guerrilla 6y agoHow is it possible that you don't know what disgust is?
- patcon 6y ago> This is story telling. I get so disappointed that this is such a common mic drop pejorative on HN. Of COURSE it's story-telling. That's the point of science communication. Stories penetrate and bridge silos. Data wrapped in narrative happens to be the most effective way to penetrate that vast majority of human neurotypes Also, I find your requirement for an upfront definition of disgust (and your discount of the content for it not being present) to feel very much like trolling. EDIT: fwiw, this description of disgust is very much like the story of laughter: how it was repurposed over evolutionary history as we become more social creatures (converting something reflexive into something under social control), and we still see relics of this "migration" in our psychology and musculature (re: duchenne's laughter). So this tracing of the history of disgust is very par for the course in how professionals who study such things talk about this stuff. Your comment is frankly ignorant and dismissive for no good reason.
- dang 6y ago"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- seneca 6y agoThis article is a little light. If you're actually interested in scholarship around the topic, Jonathan Haidt has a lot of great writing around how deep seated "gut" feelings like disgust drive our moral judgements. I would highly recommend his books and papers. The Righteous Mind is a good starting place for this topic.
- User23 6y agoThis reminds me of the finding that viewing homosexual male activity triggers serious physiological stress to heterosexual men independently of prejudice[1]. The response is entirely involuntary. I've also heard that people on the political right have a much higher disgust sensitivity than people on the left, but I suspect that's not nearly as meaningful as it first sounds due to the artificiality of forcing the diversity of moral and political opinions along a single axis based on French politics at the time of the Revolution. [1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19419899.2017.1328459 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19419899.2017.13...
- TaupeRanger 6y agolmfao...loose, nebulous terminology being applied to a mysterious aspect human experience we know next to nothing about. Why waste the effort?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- zwkrt 6y agoJordan Peterson (red flag, I know!) talks about how disgust is actually one of the oldest emotional centers in the brain and is an incredibly distinct emotion from fear. He mentions that most people think that reactionary conservative thinking is driven by fear, but he thinks it is actually driven by people’s innate ability to feel disgusted and how that emotion pours over from physical disgust of feces, rot, maggots, etc. to more social and abstract forms. Some people innately feel this more strongly than others, but you can also train yourself to be less disgusted. It bears out if you have ever seen someone who is what I might call “physically bigoted”, i.e. their body seems to have an intense physical reaction to people of different races or classes. Think about how fundamentalists really hate gay sex (or even slightly kinky “adultery”)— their actions aren’t driven by a logical process, the thought of it is so disgusting that they are repulsed by it’s very existence. I find this interesting because of how disgust has been used in the past and present as a rhetorical device for various social movements. Hitlers speeches about keeping a strong aryan race centered around analogies of disease, filth, and purity. Covid and covid coverage certainly latches onto people’s deep desires to stay away from the diseases as well. There are logical reasons to want people to wear masks but I think the feeling goes deeper for some. A certain kind of lefty thinks right wing states are a plague ship full of untouchables. On the other hand, right wingers have latched on to the “Chinese virus” narrative, and attempt to humanize Asian people is seen as naively/maliciously allowing disease spreaders into the community by conservatives. I guess my point is that we might be better off to be intentionally and rationally disgusted wherever possible, and should be aware that this incredibly strong emotion can be used to manipulate us.
- lainga 6y agoHas anyone noticed that almost all mammals have the same "disgust" expression with the wrinkled snout?
- ermir 6y agoDisgust is intimately tied to the defense against disease and pathogens, and the wrinkled snout/nose serves the function of closing down the airways to prevent pathogens from getting inside. Jordan Peterson has an excellent series of lectures regarding disgust sensitivity, here's a sample: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiDmfb6M4Vk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiDmfb6M4Vk
- steve_adams_86 6y agoThis isn’t actually known to be true though, is it? It seems like a compelling hypothesis, but rejection of external objects is only universal as far as our physical responses rather than emotional. For example, something threatening might be purged from the mouth, stomach, or intestines. This is something all humans do. Something undesirable to eat or drink won’t universally trigger a specific facial expression, sound, or feeling. Further, if I wrinkle my nose in disgust it actually flairs my nostrils, seemingly making it easier to breathe and smell. I suspect this is the same for most humans, but I’m open to correction. It simply has no limiting effect on my ability to breathe or smell, though. These are important distinctions, and distinctions which make Peterson’s claim less than factual from my point of view. There’s a great conversation about this on the Making Sense podcast. It touches on this idea exactly, and why we really don’t understand what emotional elements of expression truly mean or where they come from. Things like disgust contain a cultural or environmental element which appear to lack attachment to solely genetic origins. https://samharris.org/subscriber-rss/?uid=PNISESQukqqj4q8 https://samharris.org/subscriber-rss/?uid=PNISESQukqqj4q8
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- watwut 6y agoWrinkled snout/nose does not close the airways nor prevents pathogens from getting inside. I have to admit that if it would, covid would be way funnier. But, it does not. J
- iandanforth 6y agoThis article contains no science, feel free to ignore.
- ajarmst 6y agoReaders of this would likely find some of Jonathan Haidt's (viz. "Positive Psychology") research on disgust and elevation--as extremes of the same emotional continuum and potentially linking moral emotional reactions to evolutionary mechanisms around food selection and aversion. Edit: I now note that seneca made the same point before I did, in particular citing "The Righteous Mind" as a good source on this.
- wolfretcrap 6y agoI've never experienced this "disgust" for anything in life. Is it possible in some people it's absent?
- nate_meurer 6y agoHave you ever, say, had to clean a dog who's rolled in feces on a hot day? Or cleaned up after a toddler who's vomited a cheeseburger they ate hours before? If so, and you didn't experience anything you'd call disgust, I'd say it's possible the answer is yes.
- dorkwood 6y agoDo you ever accidentally eat rotting meat or sour milk because their smells don't illicit disgust?
- ComputerGuru 6y agoThe entire article is premised around this assumption: > Since disgust arrives in middle childhood (ages five to nine), right around the time when social biases are formed, That has not been my experience with my own kids. Disgust for both tangible (foods) and intangible (fashion/clothing) was certainly evident in children as young as two, and not yet exposed to the world. In fact, I have vivid memories of our experience with what they apparently call “baby-led weening” and distinctly recall the trademark “disgusted face” when our kid tried certain foods for the first time (at quite a bit younger than one).
- patcon 6y ago> The entire article is premised around this assumption Not sure "assumption" is the right word here, since this isn't a hot-take by the author :) I just googled "developmental disgust" and skimmed the first few research papers, and 5+ a few years seems to be the consensus of whatever the scientific evaluation processes are. Our own kids might not be a representative sample, since they're always biased toward our own genetics, and you may be developmentally atypical. Or there may be some caveats in the methodology that are controlled for in studies, but which we might misinterpret when measuring disgust in the wild (maybe "disgust" measurement protocols controls for a "new sensation aversion" or "parental mirroring" that babies have -- literally just made that up, and no idea if those are real things, but an experiment would likely surface and control for any subtleties that the field is aware of :) ) Anyhow, you got my brain thinking back to how it used to work through building scientific protocols, so thanks for the opportunity to exercise that part of my brain again (this was def not my field of study, so I have no special cred here!)
- cheese_goddess 6y ago>> While some Westerners are disgusted by insect larvae on a plate, Easterners are similarly revolted by the idea of lifting curdles from soured milk, adding salt, and giving the resulting product a quaint name like “cottage cheese.” Not quite how cottage cheese is made. Other kinds, much less so. Easterners also eat cheese, by the way. For example, paneer is a staple of Indian cuisine, various kinds of mostly lactic cheese are made in Mongolia (see recent HN article https://www.cheeseprofessor.com/blog/all-the-cheese-in-china https://www.cheeseprofessor.com/blog/all-the-cheese-in-china) etc.
- readonthegoapp 6y agothat was good i feel confident that some significant part of the US population revels in disgust and it's interesting to know that there may be an attraction to it (and that i may have it, at least when it comes to moral disgust) creepy