Pandemic elevates sensitivity to moral disgust but not pathogen disgust.

The behavioral immune system, with disgust as its motivational part, serves as the first line of defense in organisms' protection against pathogens. Laboratory studies indicate that disgust sensitivity adaptively adjusts to simulated environmental threat, but whether disgust levels similarly change in response to real-life threats, such as a pandemic, remains largely unknown. In a preregistered within-subject study, we tested whether the threat posed by the Covid-19 pandemic would lead to increased perceived disgust. The perception of threat was induced by testing during two phases of the Covid-19 pandemic (periods of high vs. low pathogen threat). We found heightened levels of moral disgust during a "wave" of the pandemic, but the effect was not observed in the domain of pathogen or sexual disgust. Moreover, the age of respondents and levels of trait anxiety were positively associated with pathogen and moral disgust, suggesting that variation in disgust sensitivity may be based chiefly on stable characteristics.

When caring breeds contempt: The impact of moral emotions on healthcare professionals' commitment during a pandemic.

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is a major heath crisis that continues to impact healthcare organizations worldwide. As infection rates surged, there was a global shortage of personal protective equipment, critical medications, ventilators, and hospital beds, meaning that healthcare professionals faced increasingly difficult workplace conditions. In this conceptual study, we argue these situations can lead to healthcare professionals experiencing moral emotions - defined as specific emotions which relate, or occur in response, to the interest or welfare of others - towards their organizations. This paper explores the three moral emotions of contempt, anger and disgust, and their potential influence on healthcare professionals' workplace commitment in the context of a pandemic. Drawing from the moral emotions and organizational commitment literature, we develop a process model to demonstrate how healthcare professionals' affective and continuous commitment are likely to decrease while, paradoxically, normative, and professional commitment may become amplified. The possible potential for positive outcomes from negative moral emotions is discussed, followed by theoretical and practical contributions of the model, and finally, directions for future research.

Induced gratitude and hope, and experienced fear, but not experienced disgust, facilitate COVID-19 prevention.

Hope, gratitude, fear, and disgust may all be key to encouraging preventative action in the context of COVID-19. We pre-registered a longitudinal experiment, which involved monthly data collections from September 2020 to September 2021 and a six-month follow-up. We predicted that a hope recall task would reduce negative emotions and elicit higher intentions to engage in COVID-19 preventative behaviours. At the first time point, participants were randomly allocated to a recall task condition (gratitude, hope, or control). At each time point, we measured willingness to engage in COVID-19 preventative behaviours, as well as experienced hope, gratitude, fear, and disgust. We then conducted a separate, follow-up study in February 2022, to see if the effects replicated when COVID-19 restrictions were relaxed in the UK. In the main study, contrary to our pre-registered hypothesis, we found that a gratitude recall task elicited more willingness to engage in COVID-19 preventative behaviours in comparison to the neutral recall task. We also found that experienced gratitude, hope, and fear were positively related to preventative action, while disgust was negatively related. These results present advancement of knowledge of the role of specific emotions in the COVID-19 pandemic.

The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on disgust sensitivity in a sample of UK adults.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to the introduction of a range of infection prevention and control (IPC) measures that resulted in dramatic changes in people's lives however these IPC measures are not practiced consistently across the population. One predictor of an individual's responses to the pandemic is disgust sensitivity. Understanding how disgust sensitivity varies within the population could help to inform design of public health messages to promote more uniform behavioral change during future pandemics. To understand the effect of the current COVID-19 pandemic on an individual's pathogen disgust sensitivity we have compared pathogen disgust sensitivity during the current COVID-19 pandemic to baseline pathogen disgust sensitivity, determined prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, in the same sample of UK adults. We find that the COVID-19 pandemic did not alter overall pathogen disgust sensitivity suggesting that disgust sensitivity is stable despite IPC measures, public health messaging, media coverage and other factors associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Investigating the conservatism-disgust paradox in reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic: A reexamination of the interrelations among political ideology, disgust sensitivity, and pandemic response.

Research has documented robust associations between greater disgust sensitivity and (1) concerns about disease, and (2) political conservatism. However, the COVID-19 disease pandemic raised challenging questions about these associations. In particular, why have conservatives-despite their greater disgust sensitivity-exhibited less concern about the pandemic? Here, we investigate this "conservatism-disgust paradox" and address several outstanding theoretical questions regarding the interrelations among disgust sensitivity, ideology, and pandemic response. In four studies (N = 1,764), we identify several methodological and conceptual factors-in particular, an overreliance on self-report measures-that may have inflated the apparent associations among these constructs. Using non-self-report measures, we find evidence that disgust sensitivity may be a less potent predictor of disease avoidance than is typically assumed, and that ideological differences in disgust sensitivity may be amplified by self-report measures. These findings suggest that the true pattern of interrelations among these factors may be less "paradoxical" than is typically believed.

"I Felt Completely Turned off by the Message": The Effects of Controlling Language, Fear, and Disgust Appeals on Responses to COVID-19 Vaccination Messages.

Psychological reactance theory (PRT) posits that when individuals' perceived freedoms are threatened or restricted, they become aversively aroused and are motivated to reestablish those freedoms, leading to a state of psychological reactance. Applying PRT, this study examined the effects of controlling language, fear, and disgust appeals on responses to COVID-19 vaccination promotion messages. Participants were randomly assigned to one of eight conditions across controlling language (high/low), fear appeals (high/low), and disgust appeals (high/low), wherein they viewed two messages, with responses measured after each message. Results showed persuasion was diminished when the levels of any of these three variables were elevated, as in conditions of either high controlling language, high fear appeals, or high disgust appeals. Relative to low levels of these variables, high levels resulted in greater freedom threat perceptions, reactance, source derogation, and less positive attitudes toward the message. A 2-way interaction between fear and disgust appeals on source derogation and message attitudes in the low controlling language condition was significant-participants reported the least source derogation and most positive attitudes toward the message in response to the low controlling language, low fear, and low disgust appeals.

COVIDisgust: Language processing through the lens of partisanship.

Disgust is an aversive reaction protecting an organism from disease. People differ in how prone they are to experiencing it, and this fluctuates depending on how safe the environment is. Previous research has shown that the recognition and processing of disgusting words depends not on the word's disgust per se but rather on individual sensitivity to disgust. However, the influence of dynamically changing disgust on language comprehension has not yet been researched. In a series of studies, we investigated whether the media's portrayal of COVID-19 will affect subsequent language processing via changes in disgust. The participants were exposed to news headlines either depicting COVID-19 as a threat or downplaying it, and then rated single words for disgust and valence (Experiment 1; N = 83) or made a lexical decision (Experiment 2; N = 86). The headline type affected only word ratings and not lexical decisions, but political ideology and disgust proneness affected both. More liberal participants assigned higher disgust ratings after the headlines discounted the threat of COVID-19, whereas more conservative participants did so after the headlines emphasized it. We explain the results through the politicization and polarization of the pandemic. Further, political ideology was more predictive of reaction times in Experiment 2 than disgust proneness. High conservatism correlated with longer reaction times for disgusting and negative words, and the opposite was true for low conservatism. The results suggest that disgust proneness and political ideology dynamically interact with perceived environmental safety and have a measurable effect on language processing. Importantly, they also suggest that the media's stance on the pandemic and the political framing of the issue may affect the public response by increasing or decreasing our disgust.

It's Time to be disgusting about COVID-19: Effect of disgust priming on COVID-19 public health compliance among liberals and conservatives.

The COVID-19 pandemic is far from over, in part due to poor adoption of public health mitigation measures in the U.S. and the continued spread of the Delta and Omicron variants. Current public health messaging used in the U.S. could be improved to better combat mistrust about COVID-19 and its mitigation measures, especially vaccines. We propose that a disgust-inducing public health campaign will be more effective than current approaches, primarily among conservatives, who are both sensitive to moralized disgust and are less compliant with U.S. public health guidelines. Using a convenience sample across two studies (n = 1610), we found that presenting disgusting images related to the COVID-19 pandemic increased public health compliance more among conservatives than among liberals. Among unvaccinated conservative participants, disgusting images significantly increased willingness to be vaccinated compared to less disgusting images of COVID-19 or perks offered for COVID-19 vaccines. Using disgusting images for public health messaging has the potential to improve compliance among conservatives and accelerate the end of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S.

The behavioral immune system in action: Psychological correlates of pathogen disgust sensitivity in healthcare professionals working in a COVID-19 hospital.

The behavioral immune system includes a set of proactive mechanisms that inhibit contact with pathogens in the first place. These mechanisms offer a sort of psychological and behavioral prophylaxis against infection. The aim of this study was to assess the functionality of the behavioral immune system under conditions of strong ecological validity. Our hypothesis was that the emotional and more primitive component of the behavioral immune system (i.e. pathogen disgust sensitivity) acts as a powerful predictor of fear of infection. The sample was made up of 101 healthcare professionals working in a COVID-19 hospital when vaccination was not yet available. We conducted a hierarchical regression analysis to assess the role of germ-related disgust in modulating levels of fear. After controlling for the significant effects of depressive symptoms and exposure to people with a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19, we found that fear of infection was more intense in those healthcare workers who reported higher levels of germ-related disgust. Fear of infection was not related to perceived infectability, an individual variable informed by more rational cognitive appraisals. These findings show that, even in healthcare workers who can take advantage of their professional knowledge and acquired skills for rational appraisals, the most primitive component of the behavioral immune system still plays a major role in eliciting fear of COVID-19. It is likely that the psychological reactions elicited by the behavioral immune system promote preventive health behaviors in modern environments as well.

The evolution of disgust for pathogen detection and avoidance.

The behavioral immune system posits that disgust functions to protect animals from pathogen exposure. Therefore, cues of pathogen risk should be a primary driver influencing variation in disgust. Yet, to our knowledge, neither the relationship between current pathogen risk and disgust, nor the correlation between objective and perceived pathogen risk have been addressed using ecologically valid measures in a global sample. The current article reports two studies addressing these gaps. In Study 1, we include a global sample (n = 361) and tested the influence of both perceived pathogen exposure and an objective measure of pathogen risk-local communicable infectious disease mortality rates-on individual differences in pathogen and sexual disgust sensitivities. In Study 2, we first replicate Study 1's analyses in another large sample (n = 821), targeting four countries (US, Italy, Brazil, and India); we then replaced objective and perceived pathogen risk with variables specific to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. In Study 1, both local infection mortality rates and perceived infection exposure predicted unique variance in pathogen and sexual disgust. In Study 2, we found that perceived infection exposure positively predicted sexual disgust, as predicted. When substituting perceived and objective SARS-CoV-2 risk in our models, perceived risk of contracting SARS-CoV-2 positively predicted pathogen and sexual disgust, and state case rates negatively predicted pathogen disgust. Further, in both studies, objective measures of risk (i.e., local infection mortality and SARS-CoV-2 rates) positively correlated with subjective measures of risk (i.e., perceived infection exposure and perceived SARS-CoV-2 risk). Ultimately, these results provide two pieces of foundational evidence for the behavioral immune system: 1) perceptions of pathogen risk accurately assay local, objective mortality risk across countries, and 2) both perceived and objective pathogen risk explain variance in disgust levels.

Women Suffered More Emotional and Life Distress than Men during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Role of Pathogen Disgust Sensitivity.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 has brought upon unprecedented challenges to nearly all people around the globe. Yet, people may differ in their risks of social, economic, and health well-being. In this research, we take a gender-difference approach to examine whether and why women suffered greater emotional and life distress than men at the early stage of the COVID-19 outbreak in China. Using a large nationwide Chinese sample, we found that compared to men, women reported higher levels of anxiety and fear, as well as greater life disturbance during the COVID-19 pandemic. Importantly, that women suffered more was partly explained by their higher level of pathogen disgust sensitivity. Our findings highlight the important consequences of gender differences in response to the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic and suggest that policymakers pay more attention to gender inequalities regarding COVID-19 responses.

Food disgust sensitivity predicts disease-preventing behaviour beyond the food domain in the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany.

In the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, personal hygiene behaviours such as proper handwashing have gained significantly more attention and interpersonal contact is performed with great care. Disgust, as a disease-avoidance mechanism, can play an important role in the promotion of hygiene behaviour. We know from previous research that pathogen disgust can be a predictor of an individual's behaviour in the pandemic. Given that the pandemic greatly affects our food and eating behaviour, the current study aims to add to the existing evidence and to complement it by investigating the role of food-specific disgust in the pandemic. For that, we conducted an online survey in Germany in April 2020, while the pandemic was spreading in Europe. A total of 519 participants completed the survey and provided information about their COVID-19-related attitudes and behaviours and about their food disgust sensitivity. The results show that food disgust sensitivity is an important predictor for an individual's feelings, shopping behaviour, and disease-preventive behaviour related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that the success of political measures to fight the pandemic critically depends on the population to support and follow the proposed measures, a better understanding of the factors driving individual behaviour is key. Implications for pandemic management are discussed.

The experience of disgust by nursing and midwifery students: An interpretative phenomenological approach study.

Although disgust is recognized as a common and prominent emotion in healthcare, little is known about how healthcare professionals understand, experience and conceptualize disgust. The aim of the study was to gain an in-depth understanding of how nursing and midwifery students experience, understand and cope with disgust in their clinical work. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Six participants (all women: two nursing students, four midwifery students) from a university in the South of England were interviewed. Four superordinate themes with eight subthemes were identified. Overall, findings suggest that participants experience both moral and physical disgust; however, they find it difficult to talk about and use other terms to describe their experience. Findings are discussed through the lens of social identity theory, to understand the relevance of professional identity and how this might further maintain the disgust taboo. The strategies participants have developed in order to cope with disgust are explored and understood within the current healthcare climate. Future research should focus on ways of addressing the experience of disgust by healthcare professionals in order to improve the quality of care provided, especially in the climate of the COVID-19 crisis.

Reactance, morality, and disgust: the relationship between affective dispositions and compliance with official health recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Emergency situations require individuals to make important changes in their behaviour. In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, official recommendations to avoid the spread of the virus include costly behaviours such as self-quarantining or drastically diminishing social contacts. Compliance (or lack thereof) with these recommendations is a controversial and divisive topic, and lay hypotheses abound regarding what underlies this divide. This paper investigates which cognitive, moral, and emotional traits separate people who comply with official recommendations from those who don't. In four studies (three pre-registered) on both U.S. and French samples, we found that individuals' self-reported compliance with official recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic was partly driven by individual differences in moral values, disgust sensitivity, and psychological reactance. We discuss the limitations of our studies and suggest possible applications in the context of health communication.

Disease and Disapproval: COVID-19 Concern is Related to Greater Moral Condemnation.

Prior research has indicated that disease threat and disgust are associated with harsher moral condemnation. We investigated the role of a specific, highly salient health concern, namely the spread of the coronavirus, and associated COVID-19 disease, on moral disapproval. We hypothesized that individuals who report greater subjective worry about COVID-19 would be more sensitive to moral transgressions. Across three studies (N = 913), conducted March-May 2020 as the pandemic started to unfold in the United States, we found that individuals who were worried about contracting the infectious disease made harsher moral judgments than those who were relatively less worried. This effect was not restricted to transgressions involving purity, but extended to transgressions involving harm, fairness, authority, and loyalty, and remained when controlling for political orientation. Furthermore, for Studies 1 and 2 the effect also was robust when taking into account the contamination subscale of the Disgust Scale-Revised. These findings add to the growing literature that concrete threats to health can play a role in abstract moral considerations, supporting the notion that judgments of wrongdoing are not based on rational thought alone.

The Impact of COVID-19 on mental health.

COVID-19 Special Issue Commentary.

Effects of anxiety sensitivity, disgust, and intolerance of uncertainty on the COVID stress syndrome: a longitudinal assessment of transdiagnostic constructs and the behavioural immune system.

Excessive fear and worry in response to the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., COVID stress syndrome) is prevalent and associated with various adverse outcomes. Research from the current and past pandemics supports the association between transdiagnostic constructs-anxiety sensitivity (AS), disgust, and intolerance of uncertainty (IU)-and pandemic-related distress. Recent research suggests a moderating effect of disgust on the relationship of AS-physical concerns and COVID-19-related distress, suggesting that transdiagnostic constructs underlie individual differences in activation of the behavioral immune system (BIS). No previous study has examined the independent and conjoint effects of pre-COVID-19 AS-physical concerns, disgust propensity (DP), disgust sensitivity (DS), and IU in this context; thus, we did so using longitudinal survey data (N = 3,062 Canadian and American adults) with simple and moderated moderations controlling for gender, mental health diagnosis, and COVID-19 diagnosis. Greater AS-physical concerns, DP, and DS predicted more severe COVID stress syndrome assessed one month later. Either DP or DS further amplified the effect of AS-physical concerns on COVID stress syndrome, except danger and contamination fears. IU did not interact with AS-physical concerns and DS or DP. Theoretical and clinical implications pertaining to delivery of cognitive behavioural therapy for pandemic-related distress are discussed.

Pre-pandemic disgust proneness predicts increased coronavirus anxiety and safety behaviors: Evidence for a diathesis-stress model.

Although health anxiety and corresponding safety behaviors can facilitate disease transmission avoidance, they can be maladaptive in excess, including during the coronavirus pandemic. Disgust proneness (i.e., tendency to experience and be sensitive to disgust) is one factor that may predict elevated coronavirus anxiety and safety behaviors during the pandemic, given the role of disgust in avoiding disease transmission. The present study examined the relations between pre-pandemic disgust proneness and coronavirus anxiety and safety behaviors in community adults who completed a 2016 study and were re-contacted on 4/1/2020 (N = 360). Interactions between pre-pandemic disgust proneness and current perceived stress were tested to examine a diathesis-stress model of the role of disgust proneness in anxiety response to the pandemic. Increased pre-pandemic disgust proneness predicted increased coronavirus anxiety and safety behaviors, controlling for number of COVID-19 cases by state. Consistent with a diathesis-stress model, current perceived stress moderated this effect, such that highest coronavirus anxiety and safety behaviors were reported by those with high disgust proneness and high stress. Trait disgust proneness may be a vulnerability factor for anxiety responses to the coronavirus pandemic, particularly among individuals experiencing high stress. Assessing disgust proneness and current stress may facilitate targeted anxiety intervention during the pandemic.

Disease avoidance in the time of COVID-19: The behavioral immune system is associated with concern and preventative health behaviors.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) poses a serious global health threat. Without a vaccine, behavior change is the most effective means of reducing disease transmission. Identifying psychological factors that may encourage engagement in preventative health behaviors is crucial. The behavioral immune system (BIS) represents a set of psychological processes thought to promote health by encouraging disease avoidance behaviors. This study examined whether individual differences in BIS reactivity (germ aversion, pathogen disgust sensitivity) were associated with concern about COVID-19 and engagement in recommended preventative health behaviors (social distancing, handwashing, cleaning/disinfecting, avoiding touching face, wearing facemasks). From March 20 to 23, 2020, a US national sample (N = 1019) completed an online survey. Germ aversion and pathogen disgust sensitivity were the two variables most consistently associated with COVID-19 concern and preventative health behaviors, while accounting for demographic, health, and psychosocial covariates. Findings have implications for the development of interventions intended to increase preventative health behaviors.

Anxiety regarding contracting COVID-19 related to interoceptive anxiety sensations: The moderating role of disgust propensity and sensitivity.

The COVID-19 public health crisis has led to extensive recommendations by officials to contain its spread. Anxiety regarding contracting the virus is prominent in the public. Specific routes to anxiety over disease contraction are under studied. It is expected that a contributory feature of fear of contracting COVID-19 involve disgust propensity and sensitivity, emotional reactions that are part of a broader behavioral immune system (BIS). A total of N = 908 Chinese adults (mean age = 40.37 years, SD = 9.27; n = 752 female) participated in a survey distributed between February 24 and March 15, 2020. Participants completed measures of anxiety sensitivity, disgust propensity and sensitivity, and fear of contracting COVID-19. Results support a moderating relationship between both disgust propensity and sensitivity in the relationship between physical concerns associated with anxiety sensitivity and fear of contracting COVID-19. These results lend support for individual variation in the activation of the BIS. Recommendations for public education to target individuals who may experience mental health consequences from pandemics are provided.