What disgusts you? A lot of people don’t like to think about the things that cause that emotion.
Val Curtis is an infectious disease specialist and professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. She co-authored a study that looked at and codified 6 levels of disgust.
“It’s a kind of dark side emotion. I came up with a theory many years ago that disgust is there to help us avoid disease. It seems to me if we can understand feelings of revulsion from things that might make us sick, then maybe we’ll have some tools to help us avoid those things better.”
This is the first time researchers have used the perspective of disease to break the emotion of disgust into its component parts, and identify six common categories triggering disgust — the others being skin conditions such as having lesions or boils, food that is rotting or has gone off and having an atypical appearance such as deformity.
She goes on to say their findings could help to target public health messaging in the future. For now, one good example is hand washing with soap or to counter the stigma associated with fighting bacteria causing sickness.
Curtis was a guest on McIntyre in the Morning.
Sharon Reardon, KABC News
