Posted February 26, Disgust is a powerful psychological and physical response. It protects us from consuming spoiled food and makes us recoil at the sight of parasitic or infectious creepy crawlers.
But disgust also has an impact on our social behavior: Think of the moral disgust you feel toward a politician exposed as corrupt or a sportsperson whose victories are discovered to be tainted by doping. Think too of how disgust regulates our sexual behavior.
Some sexual behaviors or potential partners are highly desirable, some less so, and some may be downright nauseating. For example, most people find the idea of sex with a sibling to be so repellent it is difficult even to imagine.
In all these cases, natural selection has favored the evolution of pathogen, moral, and sexual disgust because these feelings have helped our ancestors to avoid disease and seek partnerships with only the best allies and mates.
However, even at the best of times, sex is a mucky business. All intimate contact comes with a risk, and sexual disgust helps us to regulate which sexual encounters are worth pursuing and which are better passed up. In recent years, psychologists have drawn a link between sexual disgust and desire for short-term mating. Some people are more easily disgusted than others; some people are more interested in short-term mating than others. Research shows that these differences are connected.
