Pandemic elevates sensitivity to moral disgust but not pathogen disgust.

ABSTRACT: The behavioral immune system, with disgust as its motivational part, serves as the first line of defense in organisms' protection against pathogens. Laboratory studies indicate that disgust sensitivity adaptively adjusts to simulated environmental threat, but whether disgust levels similarly change in response to real-life threats, such as a pandemic, remains largely unknown. In a preregistered within-subject study, we tested whether the threat posed by the Covid-19 pandemic would lead to increased perceived disgust. The perception of threat was induced by testing during two phases of the Covid-19 pandemic (periods of high vs. low pathogen threat). We found heightened levels of moral disgust during a "wave" of the pandemic, but the effect was not observed in the domain of pathogen or sexua

SUBMITTER: Schwambergova D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10203323 | biostudies-literature | 2023 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature