[HN Gopher] The feeling of disgust, and where it comes from
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The feeling of disgust, and where it comes from
Author : dnetesn
Score : 37 points
Date : 2021-04-24 11:07 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (nautil.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (nautil.us)
| TaupeRanger wrote:
| lmfao...loose, nebulous terminology being applied to a mysterious
| aspect human experience we know next to nothing about. Why waste
| the effort?
| [deleted]
| wolfretcrap wrote:
| I've never experienced this "disgust" for anything in life.
|
| Is it possible in some people it's absent?
| nate_meurer wrote:
| Have you ever, say, had to clean a dog who's rolled in feces on
| a hot day? Or cleaned up after a toddler who's vomited a
| cheeseburger they ate hours before?
|
| If so, and you didn't experience anything you'd call disgust,
| I'd say it's possible the answer is yes.
| dorkwood wrote:
| Do you ever accidentally eat rotting meat or sour milk because
| their smells don't illicit disgust?
| ajarmst wrote:
| Readers of this would likely find some of Jonathan Haidt's (viz.
| "Positive Psychology") research on _disgust_ and _elevation_ --as
| extremes of the same emotional continuum and potentially linking
| moral emotional reactions to evolutionary mechanisms around food
| selection and aversion.
|
| Edit: I now note that seneca made the same point before I did, in
| particular citing "The Righteous Mind" as a good source on this.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| The entire article is premised around this assumption:
|
| > Since disgust arrives in middle childhood (ages five to nine),
| right around the time when social biases are formed,
|
| That has not been my experience with my own kids. Disgust for
| both tangible (foods) and intangible (fashion/clothing) was
| certainly evident in children as young as two, and not yet
| exposed to the world.
|
| In fact, I have vivid memories of our experience with what they
| apparently call "baby-led weening" and distinctly recall the
| trademark "disgusted face" when our kid tried certain foods for
| the first time (at quite a bit younger than one).
| seneca wrote:
| This article is a little light. If you're actually interested in
| scholarship around the topic, Jonathan Haidt has a lot of great
| writing around how deep seated "gut" feelings like disgust drive
| our moral judgements. I would highly recommend his books and
| papers.
|
| The Righteous Mind is a good starting place for this topic.
| User23 wrote:
| This reminds me of the finding that viewing homosexual male
| activity triggers serious physiological stress to heterosexual
| men independently of prejudice[1]. The response is entirely
| involuntary.
|
| I've also heard that people on the political right have a much
| higher disgust sensitivity than people on the left, but I
| suspect that's not nearly as meaningful as it first sounds due
| to the artificiality of forcing the diversity of moral and
| political opinions along a single axis based on French politics
| at the time of the Revolution.
|
| [1]
| https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19419899.2017.13...
| zwkrt wrote:
| Jordan Peterson (red flag, I know!) talks about how disgust is
| actually one of the oldest emotional centers in the brain and is
| an incredibly distinct emotion from fear. He mentions that most
| people think that reactionary conservative thinking is driven by
| fear, but he thinks it is actually driven by people's innate
| ability to feel disgusted and how that emotion pours over from
| physical disgust of feces, rot, maggots, etc. to more social and
| abstract forms. Some people innately feel this more strongly than
| others, but you can also train yourself to be less disgusted. It
| bears out if you have ever seen someone who is what I might call
| "physically bigoted", i.e. their body seems to have an intense
| physical reaction to people of different races or classes. Think
| about how fundamentalists really hate gay sex (or even slightly
| kinky "adultery")-- their actions aren't driven by a logical
| process, the thought of it is so disgusting that they are
| repulsed by it's very existence.
|
| I find this interesting because of how disgust has been used in
| the past and present as a rhetorical device for various social
| movements. Hitlers speeches about keeping a strong aryan race
| centered around analogies of disease, filth, and purity. Covid
| and covid coverage certainly latches onto people's deep desires
| to stay away from the diseases as well. There are logical reasons
| to want people to wear masks but I think the feeling goes deeper
| for some. A certain kind of lefty thinks right wing states are a
| plague ship full of untouchables. On the other hand, right
| wingers have latched on to the "Chinese virus" narrative, and
| attempt to humanize Asian people is seen as naively/maliciously
| allowing disease spreaders into the community by conservatives.
|
| I guess my point is that we might be better off to be
| intentionally and rationally disgusted wherever possible, and
| should be aware that this incredibly strong emotion can be used
| to manipulate us.
| patcon wrote:
| Not sure why you were downvoted, but thanks. I'm no Jordan
| Peterson fan, but I appreciate your thoughtful comment :)
| zwkrt wrote:
| Thanks. I try to take the medicine from the poison with
| regards to JP. Maps of Meaning really helped me fling myself
| out of a depression as an aspie-kind of a guy. I had such
| calm and reasoned thoughts of meaninglessness, a kind of zen-
| depression-nihilist-nothingness. I wasn't crying or staying
| in bed all day, but I couldn't be bothered to care about any
| aspect of my life. I already don't like people, hobbies were
| pointless, work a sisyphantian task, etc. His book was great
| because it was an academic look into why meaning is important
| at the basest level of existence, and how it is basically
| ones responsibility to have a full life by /injecting/
| meaning into the world--the more the better! Then I kind of
| saw through to the anti-progressive undertones and hung up
| the phone as it were, but I owe him a lot.
| goldenchrome wrote:
| What is it about the anti-progressive undertones, to use
| your language, that caused you to stop reading him?
| proc0 wrote:
| People have that feeling of disgust towards JP.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| I don't understand how. JP is best known for being a
| (believe it or not, relatively left-wing) psychologist
| teaching young adults the virtue of responsibility. What is
| wrong with that?
| zwkrt wrote:
| Progressives don't like responsibility because it is
| complicated to balance talk of personal responsibility
| with that of social justice. The hardest part of being a
| minority is that one can blame almost all of ones ills on
| the state of society, and be correct to do so, but in
| doing so one loses personal control over ones life in the
| day-to-day. We have to act as if we have responsibility
| even if we don't, just to be sane. It's the same line of
| thinking as believing in free will. If you don't believe
| in it deep down you will almost certainly fall into a
| depression.
|
| But right-wing rhetoric flips the script and says of
| course we have to act with responsibility, because we
| /really are/ responsible at the lowest level of reality.
| If your life isn't going well then that's your
| responsibility to fix it and yours alone. Minorities and
| poor people hear this and either beat themselves up or
| reject it outright, since it is a half-truth at best.
|
| So now talking about responsibility is tied up with
| bigotry, which I think is really unfortunate.
| watwut wrote:
| Conservatives don't like responsibility for themselves
| tho. Only for those they perceive as others.
| watwut wrote:
| The Hitlers speaches about aryan strength centered on aryan
| strenght and history and such. They had feel good and feel
| powerfuly strong element. They were motivating to target
| audience. He was in business of building powerful Reich, that
| required vision of strength and victory, not just threat.
|
| He did had also speeches about Jews being Marxists and pest
| and disease. That was favourite topic too.
|
| But the sentence itself is just something someone who is
| bluffing and hoping for best would say.
|
| I kind of suspect that part about disgust being oldest center
| of brain turns out similar "sounds good but not really"
| nonsense.
| [deleted]
| wombatmobile wrote:
| TFA uses the terms "disgust" and "moral repugnance", without
| defining them, as if we all know and agree what they are, then
| "discusses" their historical cultural aetiological development
| without evidence.
|
| This is story telling.
| guerrilla wrote:
| How is it possible that you don't know what disgust is?
| patcon wrote:
| > This is story telling.
|
| I get so disappointed that this is such a common mic drop
| pejorative on HN. Of COURSE it's story-telling. That's the
| point of science communication. Stories penetrate and bridge
| silos. Data wrapped in narrative happens to be the most
| effective way to penetrate that vast majority of human
| neurotypes
|
| Also, I find your requirement for an upfront definition of
| disgust (and your discount of the content for it not being
| present) to feel very much like trolling.
|
| EDIT: fwiw, this description of disgust is very much like the
| story of laughter: how it was repurposed over evolutionary
| history as we become more social creatures (converting
| something reflexive into something under social control), and
| we still see relics of this "migration" in our psychology and
| musculature (re: duchenne's laughter). So this tracing of the
| history of disgust is very par for the course in how
| professionals who study such things talk about this stuff. Your
| comment is frankly ignorant and dismissive for no good reason.
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| lainga wrote:
| Has anyone noticed that almost all mammals have the same
| "disgust" expression with the wrinkled snout?
| tolbish wrote:
| I was surprised to find there had been no overarching study on
| mammalian facial interactions until recently [0]. Supposedly
| the first review of mammalian facial interactions and their
| neurobiology took place in 2011.
|
| [0]
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095943881...
| ermir wrote:
| Disgust is intimately tied to the defense against disease and
| pathogens, and the wrinkled snout/nose serves the function of
| closing down the airways to prevent pathogens from getting
| inside.
|
| Jordan Peterson has an excellent series of lectures regarding
| disgust sensitivity, here's a sample:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiDmfb6M4Vk
| throwaway0xa wrote:
| It really is a great series of lectures that cover a wide
| range of human phenomenon and ties the pieces together in one
| coherent story.
|
| Hope you're prepared for the downvotes though. We can't have
| thinking that goes against the narrative here, and Peterson
| might as well be Goebbels.
| [deleted]
| watwut wrote:
| Wrinkled snout/nose does not close the airways nor prevents
| pathogens from getting inside.
|
| I have to admit that if it would, covid would be way funnier.
| But, it does not. J
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| This isn't actually known to be true though, is it? It seems
| like a compelling hypothesis, but rejection of external
| objects is only universal as far as our physical responses
| rather than emotional.
|
| For example, something threatening might be purged from the
| mouth, stomach, or intestines. This is something all humans
| do.
|
| Something undesirable to eat or drink won't universally
| trigger a specific facial expression, sound, or feeling.
|
| Further, if I wrinkle my nose in disgust it actually flairs
| my nostrils, seemingly making it easier to breathe and smell.
| I suspect this is the same for most humans, but I'm open to
| correction. It simply has no limiting effect on my ability to
| breathe or smell, though.
|
| These are important distinctions, and distinctions which make
| Peterson's claim less than factual from my point of view.
|
| There's a great conversation about this on the Making Sense
| podcast. It touches on this idea exactly, and why we really
| don't understand what emotional elements of expression truly
| mean or where they come from. Things like disgust contain a
| cultural or environmental element which appear to lack
| attachment to solely genetic origins.
|
| https://samharris.org/subscriber-rss/?uid=PNISESQukqqj4q8
| freeslave wrote:
| I think you're referring to the Flehmen response:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flehmen_response
| 7373737373 wrote:
| Seems to be similar to the "bass face" of appreciation:
| https://i.imgur.com/uVSSTSD.png
| iandanforth wrote:
| This article contains no science, feel free to ignore.
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