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 exceeded distal for most common. When the same comparison was made for core disgusts, relative to moral disgusts and fear-provoking experiences, the proximal sensory cues contributed more to core disgusts. The implications of these findings for a disease avoidance account of disgust, for multisensory disgust research, and core disgust’s classification as an emotion or a drive, are discussed.

Methods
Data was collected on Qualtrics, and analysed via SPSS and R (for graphical purposes only). Only deidentifiable data is uploaded.