1,395 research outputs found
Body Odor Disgust Sensitivity Predicts Moral Harshness Toward Moral Violations of Purity
No full textDetecting pathogen threats and avoiding disease is fundamental to human survival. The behavioral immune system (BIS) framework outlines a set of psychological functions that may have evolved for this purpose. Disgust is a core emotion that plays a pivotal role in the BIS, as it activates the behavioral avoidance motives that prevent people from being in contact with pathogens. To date, there has been little agreement on how disgust sensitivity might underlie moral judgments. Here, we investigated moral violations of “purity” (assumed to elicit disgust) and violations of “harm” (assumed to elicit anger). We hypothesized that individual differences in BIS-related traits would be associated with greater disgust (vs. anger) reactivity to, and greater condemnation of Purity (vs. Harm) violations. The study was pre-registered (https://osf.io/57nm8/). Participants (N = 632) rated scenarios concerning moral wrongness or inappropriateness and regarding disgust and anger. To measure individual differences in the activation of the BIS, we used our recently developed Body Odor Disgust Scale (BODS), a BIS-related trait measure that assesses individual differences in feeling disgusted by body odors. In line with our predictions, we found that scores on the BODS relate more strongly to affective reactions to Purity, as compared to Harm, violations. In addition, BODS relates more strongly to Moral condemnation than to perceived Inappropriateness of an action, and to the condemnation of Purity violations as compared to Harm violations. These results suggest that the BIS is involved in moral judgment, although to some extent this role seems to be specific for violations of “moral purity,” a response that might be rooted in disease avoidance. Data and scripts to analyze the data are available on the Open Science Framework (OSF) repository: https://osf.io/tk4x5/. Planned analyses are available at https://osf.io/x6g3u/
Body odor disgust sensitivity is associated with prejudice towards a fictive group of immigrants
No full textWhy are certain individuals persistent in opposing immigration? The behavioral immune system framework implies that a psychological mechanism, which adapted to detect and avoid pathogen threats, is also reflected in contemporary social attitudes. Moreover, prejudice towards outgroups might be partially driven by implicit pathogen concerns related to the perceived dissimilarity with these groups' hygiene and food preparation practices. Disgust, a universal core emotion supposedly evolved to avoid pathogen threats, as well as olfaction, both play a pivotal role in evoking disgust. In an online study (N = 800), we investigated whether individual differences in body odor disgust sensitivity (BODS) correlate with negative attitudes towards a fictive refugee group. The data analysis plan and hypotheses were preregistered. Results show that body odor disgust sensitivity is associated with xenophobia: BODS was positively associated with negative attitudes towards the fictive group. This relationship was partially mediated by perceived dissimilarities of the group in terms of hygiene and food preparation. Our finding suggests prejudice might be rooted in sensory mechanisms
Body Odor Trait Disgust Sensitivity Predicts Perception of Sweat Biosamples
No full textBody odors are potent triggers of disgust and regulate social behaviors in many species. The role of olfaction in disgust-associated behaviors has received scant attention in the research literature, in part because olfactory disgust assessments have required laboratory testing with odors. We have devised the "Body Odor Disgust Scale" (BODS) to facilitate research on olfactory disgust. In this study, we evaluated whether individual differences in BODS scores would be associated with the perception of disgust for sweat samples in a laboratory setting. Results show that BODS was a strong predictor of disgust ratings of sweat samples even when controlling for general disgust sensitivity. In contrast, odor intensity ratings were unrelated to BODS scores. Our findings suggest that the BODS scores reflect body odor disgust perception. The BODS scale might facilitate research on olfactory disgust responses and associated behaviors
The smell of prejudice: individual differences in body odor disgust sensitivity predict prejudice towards a fictive unfamiliar group
No full textThe Behavioral Immune System (BIS), is a psychological mechanism adapted to detect and avoid pathogen threats. According the BIS framework, prejudice towards unfamiliar groups might be partially driven by concerns on their dissimilarity in terms of hygiene and food preparation. Disgust is a core and universal emotion supposedly evolved to avoid disease (pathogen threats) and olfaction plays a pivotal role in evoking this emotion. We investigated whether individual differences in Body Odor Disgust Sensitivity Scale (BODS) correlate with unfavorable attitudes towards a fictive unfamiliar group, the Dhrashnee refugees. We ran a pre-registered online questionnaire study on a sample of N = 800 participants from an MTurk pool. Participants rated their attitudes towards the Dhrashnee, perceptions of similarity with the Dhrashnee
and general attitudes towards immigration. Results fully supported our pre-registered hypotheses: higher levels of BODS are associated with higher levels of prejudice and this association is mediated by perceived dissimilarity in hygiene and food preparation practices,
a result that is consistent with the theoretical framework provided by the BIS
Body Odor Disgust Sensitivity Predicts Moral Harshness towards Moral Violations of Purity
No full textIn this preregistered study, we investigated how different types of moral violations elicit disgust vs. anger, and the role of disgust sensitivity in responding to moral violations. Our results show that purity violations primarily elicit disgust reactions, and individual differences in body odor disgust sensitivity moderates reactions to purity violations
Do Valenced Odors and Trait Body Odor Disgust Affect Evaluation of Emotion in Dynamic Faces?
No full textDisgust is a core emotion evolved to detect and avoid the ingestion of poisonous food as well as the contact with pathogens and other harmful agents. Previous research has shown that multisensory presentation of olfactory and visual information may strengthen the processing of disgust-relevant information. However, it is not known whether these findings extend to dynamic facial stimuli that changes from neutral to emotionally expressive, or if individual differences in trait body odor disgust may influence the processing of disgust-related information. In this preregistered study, we tested whether a classification of dynamic facial expressions as happy or disgusted, and an emotional evaluation of these facial expressions, would be affected by individual differences in body odor disgust sensitivity, and by exposure to a sweat-like, negatively valenced odor (valeric acid), as compared with a soap-like, positively valenced odor (lilac essence) or a no-odor control. Using Bayesian hypothesis testing, we found evidence that odors do not affect recognition of emotion in dynamic faces even when body odor disgust sensitivity was used as moderator. However, an exploratory analysis suggested that an unpleasant odor context may cause faster RTs for faces, independent of their emotional expression. Our results further our understanding of the scope and limits of odor effects on facial perception affect and suggest further studies should focus on reproducibility, specifying experimental circumstances where odor effects on facial expressions may be present versus absent
Thought for food: Cognitive influences on chemosensory perceptions and preferences.
No full textSensory and consumer research often focuses more on bottom-up than top-down influences on consumers’ perception and acceptance of foods. Yet, cognitive processes create and transform incoming sensory information originating from separate senses, including olfaction, gustation, and somatosensation, into the perception of flavour. The present paper discusses five cognitive processes that affect human chemosensory perception and responses to food flavours: Attention, language, memory, learning, and metacognition. It is argued that each of these processes are important in shaping interactions with food via the chemical senses.
Attention moderates perception through its distribution across the environment, fine-tuning it for particular stimuli. Interactions among smells, tastes, and textures are acquired through learning, as are hedonic properties. Language affects food acceptability and preference, as does the memory of prior experiences with a food,
even when they are not at a conscious level of processing. Metacognitive knowledge of personal capabilities indirectly influences the results of sensory evaluations. Future sensory and consumer research should take into account the significant role that these cognitive factors play in processing incoming chemosensory information
Body odour disgust sensitivity predicts authoritarian attitudes
No full textAuthoritarianism has resurfaced as a research topic in political psychology, as it appears relevant to explain current political trends. Authoritarian attitudes have been consistently linked to feelings of disgust, an emotion that is thought to have evolved to protect the organism from contamination. We hypothesized that body odour disgust sensitivity (BODS) might be associated with authoritarianism, as chemo-signalling is a primitive system for regulating interpersonal contact and disease avoidance, which are key features also in authoritarianism. We used well-validated scales for measuring BODS, authoritarianism and related constructs. Across two studies, we found that BODS is positively related to authoritarianism. In a third study, we showed a positive association between BODS scores and support for Donald Trump, who, at the time of data collection, was a presidential candidate with an agenda described as resonating with authoritarian attitudes. Authoritarianism fully explained the positive association between BODS and support for Donald Trump. Our findings highlight body odour disgust as a new and promising domain in political psychology research. Authoritarianism and BODS might be part of the same disease avoidance framework, and our results contribute to the growing evidence that contemporary social attitudes might be rooted in basic sensory functions
The Body Odor Disgust Scale (BODS): Development and Validation of a Novel Olfactory Disgust Assessment
No full textDisgust plays a crucial role in the avoidance of pathogen threats. In many species, body odors provide important information related to health and disease, and body odors are potent elicitors of disgust in humans. With this background, valid assessments of body odor disgust sensitivity are warranted. In the present article, we report the development and psychometric validation of the Body Odor Disgust Scale (BODS), a measure suited to assess individual differences in disgust reaction to a variety of body odors. Collected data from 3 studies (total n = 528) show that the scale can be used either as a unidimensional scale or as a scale that reflects two hypothesized factors: sensitivity to one's own body odors versus those of others. Guided by our results, we reduced the scale to 12 items that capture the essence of these 2 factors. The final version of the BODS shows an excellent internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha s > 0.9). The BODS subscales show convergent validity with other general disgust scales, as well as with other olfactory functions measures and with aspects of personality that are related to pathogen avoidance. A fourth study confirmed the construct validity of the BODS and its measurement invariance to gender. Moreover, we found that, compared with other general disgust scales, the BODS is more strongly related to perceived vulnerability to disease. The BODS is a brief and valid assessment of trait body odor disgust sensitivity
Body odor disgust sensitivity independently predicts authoritarian attitudes
No full textThe behavioral immune system (BIS) provides us a set of emotional and behavioral responses to avoid the threat of pathogens. Individual differences in BIS can make some individuals endorse social values that minimize the contact with groups that might be perceived unfamiliar or deviant. Disgust is one of the emotions that is most consistently involved in the BIS and it has been found to be consistently related to socially conservative attitudes. Disgust sensitivity to body odors plays a crucial role in the BIS but it has been largely understated by research linking disgust sensitivity. We the developed a new scale that measures individual differences in body odors disgust sensitivity (BODS) and assessed how this measure related to conservative attitudes. We hypothesized that the BODS should relate to social, but not economic, conservatism, as only the latter should share common motives with the BIS. Furthermore, we hypothesized that the BODS should share more core motives with conservatism and thus it should at least partially mediate the relationship between general disgust sensitivity measures and conservatism. We developed a 30 items measure of BODS where participants had to rate how they would feel disgusted in five different scenarios involving six body odors consistently linked to disease detection. We ran three studies (N = 200, N = 159 and N = 269) through Amazon Mechanical Turk where we collected participants’ differences in: BODS, three domains of disgust (TDD) (studies 1-3), disgust sensitivity (DS, studies 2-3), Perceived Vulnerability to Disease (PVD, studies 2-3) and in social conservatism (Right-Wing Authoritarianism RWA, studies 1-3) and economic conservatism (Social Dominance Orientation, SDO, study 3). We ran zero order correlations to assess the relationship between BODS, other Disgust Sensitivity measures and conservatism measures. Akaike Information Criterion based stepwise model selection procedures were used to identify the variables that mostly accounted for participants’ variance in conservatism. Mediation analyses were ran to test the hypothesis that BODS could mediate, at least partially the relationship between general disgust sensitivity measures and conservatism.
Results: Across three studies we found that 1) BODS has good convergent validity with other measures of general disgust sensitivity (Studies 1-3) 2) BODS is consistently and independently related to RWA even when taking into account DS-R and/or TDD (Studies 1-3) 3) BODS relates to social, but not economic conservatism 4) BODS at least partially mediates the relationship between general disgust sensitivity measures and social conservatism (Studies 1-3). Our results show that body odor disgust sensitivity independently predicts socially conservative attitudes, and our findings suggest that the study of the biological basis of social attitudes would benefit from an increased focus on basic sensory-emotional processes. While our approach is broadly congruent with current theoretical frameworks emphasizing the evolutionary roots of disgust in basic chemosensory processes, an increased empirical focus on body odor perception might provide a unique link between pathogen detection and social regulation mechanisms
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