Attention on visual disgust: comparison of intentional and unintentional gaze on disgusting images

Disgust-eliciting stimuli have been shown to both capture attention, even when task-irrelevant, and to be visually avoided when alternative stimuli are available. This study investigated these effects across two experiments conducted from June to December 2024. In the first experiment, disgust-eliciting images served as distractors, while in the second, the same images were designated as targets. Additionally, four categories of disgust-eliciting stimuli representing different threats – disgusting animals and spoiled food (ancestral/core disgust), diseases and pollution (modern/contamination disgust) – were compared to assess the generality of the observed effects. Using a sample of over 100 participants, we replicated the distracting effect of disgust-eliciting stimuli across all categories except spoiled food. However, no differences in involuntary visual attention were observed between disgust-eliciting and neutral stimuli, suggesting that the distraction effect comes from cognitive processing rather than automatic visual capture. In the aimed viewing experiment, participants thoroughly scanned disgusting stimuli rather than avoiding them, with distinct scanning patterns emerging for each stimulus category. These patterns are discussed in relation to their functional significance. Finally, we highlight a pronounced difference in intentional versus unintentional gazing patterns for pollution stimuli, offering insights that may be of interest to environmental psychologists.