Differential involvement of the senses in disgust memories

One prediction derived from the disease avoidance account of disgust is that proximal disgust cues (smells, tastes, touches), should elicit this emotion more intensely than distal disgust cues (sights, sounds). If correct, then memories of disgusting experiences should involve smelling, tasting or touching to a greater degree, than seeing or hearing. Two surveys were conducted on university students to test this idea, drawing upon their naturalistic experiences. Survey one (N = 127) asked participants to detail their most memorable disgusting, fear-provoking, morally-repulsive, and yucky/gross experience, with each recollection self-rated for sensory involvement. Survey two (N = 89) employed the same task, but this time participants recollected their most common disgusting, fear-provoking, morally-repulsive, and yucky/gross experience in the preceding week. For core disgusts, the proximal and distal sensory cues contributed equally for most memorable disgust experiences, but proximal ex..., Data was collected on Qualtrics, and analysed via SPSS and R (for graphical purposes only). Only deidentifiable data is uploaded., , # Differential involvement of the senses in disgust memories

This survey examines which senses are most involved in participants' most memorable (across their lives) and most-common (in their past week), disgusting, yucky/gross, fearful and morally repulsive experiences.

We had two main aims:
(1) Core disgust experiences (disgust, and yucky/gross) will have more involvement of proximal senses (smell, taste, passive touch, active touch) compared to the distal senses (sound, sight). **To achieve this aim we compare whether any proximal sense was involved more than any distal sense (i.e., maximum distal vs. maximum proximal).**
(2) Core disgust experiences (disgust, and yucky/gross) will have more involvement of proximal vs distal sensory involvement, relative to other forms of disgust and emotions (morally repulsive and fear**). To test this we compare the difference in proximal and distal sensory involvement (proximal sensory minus distal sensory), across the different affective stat...