L14 - Disgust and Compassion Flashcards
Where does disgust stem from?
- Developed from distaste, food rejection triggered by unpleasant tastes (typically bitter)
- Ability to detect and expel bitter food is evolutionarily old - seen in sea anemones
Is disgust a disease avoidant response?
- Threat of disease and infection likely shaped disgust response
- Means bad taste
- Many early definitions centre on the mouth, or real/imagines ingestion
- Facial expression functional - closing of nose and mouth is protective
- Physiological component related to ingestion e.g nausea
What are the cues that trigger disgust?
- Smells, tactile or visual cues that there is chance of infection
- Animals can be disgusting e.g maggots as associated with disease
- Original forms of disgust thought to centre on defending from infection via oral route
What is the case of spiders?
- Spiders/snakes evoke disgust
- Evolutionary argument: poisonous animals but challenged as other non-poisonous animals are also deemed as disgusting e.g slugs and eels
What were the three studies investigating disgust and spiders?
1) Spider phobics could not provide consensus on scary features of spiders and increased tendency to fear other disgust evoking animals
2) Sig correlation between animal phobias and disgust sensitivity, not found for anxiety unlike other phobias e.g tigers were not associated with disgust but were with anxiety
3) Ideas include how hair on spiders are associated with disease or full bodies are associated with diseased animals
What was an early study looking at a sweatshirt?
- Rate how much you would feel about wearing this nice unisex laundered jumper on a scale from 0-100
- Then asked a followup question: someone wore this for a limited time yesterday but it washed a while ago, and with different conditions with the cleanliness e.g person they were attracted to wore it
- No significant difference in ratings for positive people
- Sig decrease in ratings for evil people, disliked people or for dog poo
- Most neg rating for evil because of the magical law of contagion (physical contact leads to influence through transfer of some of their properties)
What are the levels of disease avoidance?
- Core disgust: food/animals
- Blood injury
- Sexual: sexual relations with dogs
- Interpersonal: more likely to share toothbrush with partner not postman
- Moral: triggered by violation of social norms and moral values = exaptation (existing system assumes new functional role e.g to protect self)
What are the differences in core-disgust and blood injury disgust?
- Core disgust: nausea, stomach contractions, and can show OCD symptoms
- Blood injury: light-headedness, fainting, cardiovascular changes, and can show more reliable associations with blood-injection injury phobia
What was a study looking at moral disgust?
- Ppts asked to wear nazi armband on top of t-shirt or underneath
- Sig more ppts chose under t-shirt
- Reasons reported management account
- Contradicting the magical law of contagion
- Subsequent study found that third-parties rated visible wearers as more disgusting than non-visible
- Inconsistent with immoral stimuli being contagious
- People avoid immoral stimuli because they are concerned about being seen to associate with them
What is the relationship between disgust and OCD?
- OCD characterised by time-consuming and distressing obsessions and compulsions
- Contamination worries are one of the common themes associated with OCD
- OCD might represent a dysfunction in the disgust appraisal process = tendency for objects to be perceived as harmful or contaminating is increased
- These appraisals might encourage compulsive avoidance/neutralising behaviours to alleviate distress
What was a study looking at the law of contagion?
- Ppts had OCD, PD or no anxiety disorder, and asked them to identify contaminated objects
- Touched a pencil to their contaminated object and asked them how contmainated the pencil is now, then keep touching pencils to the original (diluting)
- Those with OCD reported higher contamination and not very diluted
- When this was repeated with a sweet (not disgust), no pattern seen
- Individuals with OCD may have a higher threshold for feeling as though contamination is still present
What is compassion?
- The feeling that rises in witnessing another’s suffering and that motivates a subsequent desire to help
- Some argue it is the result of evo. Processes, whilst others sat it is too costly to the self to align
- Reducing suffering of others: compassion, empathic distress, pity
- Likely share central features: antecedents, key appraisal components, action tendencies, physiological responses, behaviours
What is the difference between compassion, empathy and pity?
- Compassion is feeling FOR other people = leads to approaching behaviours, empathy= = feeling with others = leads to withdrawal
- Pity and compassion have a difference in appraisal of dominance e.g pity is appraisal of dominance over the other person
What are the three adaptive functions of compassion?
- Welfare of offspring
- Mate Selection
- Co-operation with others
What is the welfare of offspring?
- Human Offspring born early and more dependent
- Adaptations: Powerful response to distress, tactile and attachment behaviours and compassion
- Compassion increases chances of survival for infant
