Disgusting, yes, with an explanation. There are psychologists who’ve actually thought about such things a lot in recent years, and they’re discovering unsuspected complexity in the simple impulse to barf. According to them, feeling disgust is more than just feeling queasy; it’s an expression of our essential humanity. A dog doesn’t turn up its nose over a platter of raw chicken livers; a cat’s idea of a real treat is mouse tartare. Disgust is a people thing: to gag is human, as it were, to say “Yech!” is divine. It’s a way we humans have of separating ourselves from the lower orders. “What started as a reaction to offensive substances has evolved into something broader,” says University of Pennsylvania psychologist Paul Rozin, one of the small band of researchers examining this understandably neglected subject. “Somewhere along the way there was a transformation of the basic idea, from ‘get this out of my mouth’ to ‘get this out of my soul’.”
The study of such down-deep emotions as disgust, anger, and shame has been gathering momentum since around 1980. Researchers have grown particularly fascinated by the role these feelings may play in our moral life. Disgust, the least studied of the lot, is now seen as a highly moral emotion. It began, probably, as a straight-forward rejection of rotten-tasting things. But as civilization reared its fussy head, we star-Led rejecting what was unseemly, as well, perhaps to show we were more elevated than wart hogs. So disgust grew more sophisticated, judgmental. The psychologists doubt that it’s innate. Up to about the age of 6, children can countenance vile things. A 3-year-old not only doesn’t mind stepping barefoot on a worm, he’s tickled watching it wriggle around in his frosty flakes. Two-year-olds? Forget about it: to them, feces make great cookie dough, until some horrified adult expresses disapproval.
That’s where it begins. Feces are the universal disgust substance, says Rozin. And that’s probably so because toilet training, at least in our culture, is very likely the earliest disgust experience we get. “There are cultures in which it’s done very casually,” Rozin says. “But we train our kids not only to gain bladder and bowel control but to be offended by these things.” In effect, morality begins at the edge of a potty seat.
As we grow up, disgust becomes second nature, with its own characteristic face. Three, in fact: wrinkling of the nose–a reflex we develop presumably to keep out bad smells; the dropped jaw, or “gape,” to eject stuff that tastes bad, and the curled upper lip, which mixes disgust with another basic emotion, anger, often in situations that evoke moral responses–like looking at photos of abused children.
Used chocolate: In time, we learn also to be offended by the history of things–where they’ve been and what they’ve touched. The idea of contamination is a major feature of disgust. For instance, says Rozin, if we didn’t have contamination, “just think of the incredible potential of all those used chocolates”–the ones that people surreptitiously dump in an ashtray after finding they have gunky centers. Since they’re already bitten, you could see what’s inside them. This would take the guesswork out of it. They could be resold at undreamed-of profit–except, would you buy a used chocolate, even at a discount? “A few of us recognize that this will not be a successful product,” says Rozin.
A favorite object for hypothesis about contamination is Hitler’s sweater, one of the items on the disgust scale developed mainly by Jonathan Haidt, a colleague of Rozin’s, to measure people’s queasiness levels. Most people tested indicate they wouldn’t want to wear Hitler’s sweater even if you laundered it; in fact, even if you unraveled it and reknit it from scratch. Carol Nemeroff, yet another researcher in the disgust business, says there are two kinds of contamination: one is germ residue, a sort of physical particle that can be laundered out. The other is spiritual residue, as in Hitler’s sweater, which all the perfumes of Araby will not expunge. Says Rozin: “You can’t do anything for most people to make it un-Hitlered.”
Rozin would have a hard time getting on with his research if he didn’t rate low on the disgust scale himself. In the line of duty, he has eaten many insects, finding them on the whole “rather tasty.” It’s not surprising that insects are delicacies in some countries, he says: disgust is somewhat culture-bound. In November, Rozin and Haidt head for India, where ingesting offensive substances can be a punishable offense in itself. “My guess is that the evolution of emotion is primarily a moral thing there,” Rozin says.
After that, who knows where his lonely quest may take him: to pickled yak’s feet in Nepal? Minced auk eyes in Tibe? If nothing else, there are all those half-eaten chocolates waiting to be disposed of back home. Science (yech!) marches on.
