Tiffanny O'Callaghan, CultureLab editor
DISGUST can be a bewildering emotion. In her new book, That's Disgusting,
research psychologist Rachel Herz points out that our tendency to react
by pulling away is based on a combination of self-preservation and
learned behaviour.
When we are grossed out we all make
the same face: opening the mouth, pulling back the upper lip, wrinkling
the nose, even sticking out the tongue. But what causes us to sneer
with disgust differs.
When you grow up eating fermented animal
products you may consider them delicious, but if you weren't raised
munching Stilton cheese it can be gag-inducing stuff. Hákarl - shark
meat decomposed underground - is a delicacy in some Icelandic cultures,
but to many outsiders the idea of eating it is repugnant.
How
much does getting used to something affect how gross you find it?
Consider deliberately sticking your face into someone's stinky
sneakers; as Herz found at the National Rotten Sneakers Contest she
judged, doing so is not nearly so revolting if you are given time to
prepare.
Herz tours many
sources of visceral disgust, but it's when this merges with moral
outrage that things get interesting. Though she occasionally draws some
tenuous conclusions, most of her points unearth the contradictory
nature of disgust. For example, donning a dry-cleaned sweater once
owned by Adolf Hitler won't confer any evil personality traits, but you
would struggle to find people willing to wear it.
Most
alarming, though, is when our tendency toward disease avoidance is
conflated with moral repugnance. Herz points out that during the
Holocaust and the Rwandan Tutsi massacre in 1994, the victims were cast
as disease-ridden vermin. "The 'final solution' is frighteningly
simple," Herz writes. "If you want to make a group despicable and
justify murdering them, equate them with disease and disgust."
It's a powerful point that leaves you contemplating how your own sense of disgust may be manipulated, or even overcome.
http://www.newscientist.com/
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