Disgust: The Gatekeeper Emotion
Susan Miller, author of two foundational works on shame (The Shame Experience [TAP, 1985/1993pbk]; Shame in Context [TAP, 1996]), now turns to disgust, an intriguing emotion that has received little attention in the professional literature. For Miller, the psychological study of disgust revolves around boundary issues: We tend to feel disgusted about things (from bodily processes to decaying organic matter to ethnic attributes of "foreign" people) that lie on the border between our sense of self and nonself or between our sense of "good self" and "bad self." Miller's clinical and everyday examples of disgust lead her to explore the developmental grounding of the capacity to disgust, and this topic opens to consideration of the relation of the various sensory modalities to disgust reactions. Why, Miller asks, do we see disgusting images and smell disgusting smells but not hear disgusting sounds? And further, what makes sensory impressions or objects "disgusting" to certain people but not to others? Why do the images and smells of disease so frequently elicit disgust? And what is the relation of disgust to sex, procreation, and human intimacy? Laced with developmental insights and vivid illustrations of disgust-related syndromes, Disgust: The Gatekeeper Emotion incorporates cultural analysis that links disgust to images of illness and health, to family life, to group identity, and to artistic and scientific creativity. For Miller, the central disgust dialectic - the self's need to safeguard itself against noxious intrusions from without and simultaneously to nourish itself through contact with "otherness" - obtains whether the discourse concerns nature, nations, or noses. With her typically graceful and gracious prose, Miller puts disgust on the psychological map and thereby adds a chapter to our understanding of the role of emotion in therapy and in everyday life.
Disgust: The Gatekeeper Emotion
"What Susan Miller previously achieved in her authoritative discourse on shame pertains equally to her rich, wide-ranging consideration of disgust. She brings to our attention the significance of this 'distasteful' affect and gives it the stature of a major negative emotion, a companion of shame, terror, and humiliation. Disgust is a response to something foreign, someone or something outside the self; the Other is bad and must be distanced. Miller illustrates her points with useful clinical examples and evocative historical and cultural precedents. This beautifully written volume adds greatly to the clinician's depth of understanding and range of interventions."
Why are so many people drawn to things that should, by all rights, compel them to turn away in horror? Modern science has an answer, and it has everything to do with how the emotion of disgust fundamentally works.
Surely this AI strategy is against the spirit of the experiment, since if an AI tried this IRL, the gatekeeper would turn away and call for the AI to be shut down instead of being required by artificial rules to continue to engage?
Disgust as one of the basic, universal emotions (Ekman, 1992) serves a vital purpose of avoiding potentially dangerous stimuli (Miller, 2013). Although initially thought to be responsible for the reaction of revulsion towards oral incorporation of inedible or poisonous objects (Davey, 1994; Marzillier & Davey, 2004; Rozin & Fallon, 1987), in the course of subsequent research it was found that disgust also encompasses a broader range of elicitors (Kelly, 2011). Disgust may emerge in response to various objects or behaviors, such as germs and disease (Curtis, 2007), body waste (Angyal, 1941; Haidt, Rozin, McCauley, & Imada, 1997), bad tastes (Rozin, Haidt, & McCauley, 2008), moistness (Oum, Lieberman, & Aylward, 2011) insects, blood (Tybur, Lieberman, & Griskevicius, 2009), or bad smells (Case, Repacholi, & Stevenson, 2006; Miller, 1998; Schnall, Haidt, Clore, & Jordan, 2008), suggesting the multimodal character of disgust.
Various authors reflect on the importance of particular senses to disgust. Most of them agree that taste is the primal detector of repulsiveness (Darwin, 1872; Rozin & Fallon, 1987; Chapman, Kim, Susskind, & Anderson, 2009), but touch and smell are considered crucial as well (Miller, 2013), with the latter being strongly connected to taste (Buck & Bargmann, 2000; Darwin, 1872; Rozin, 1982). Of the three senses mentioned above, only smell is a distal one. Stevenson (2011) indicates that olfactory skills are useful in detecting contamination threats, and as such serve as a disgust-defense mechanism, as part of BIS. Recent studies show that unlike many other emotions, disgust can be easily elicited merely by the sense of smell (Bensafi et al., 2002; Croy, Olgun, & Jorashky, 2011). These findings suggest the existence of a significant link between disgust sensitivity/BIS and olfaction, a link that has not been extensively explored.
It. Disgusto; Deut. Ekel; Es. Asco; Fr. Dégoût. The concept of disgust refers to an emotional reaction of revulsion and strong disapproval elicited by something perceived as repellent or offensive, which is to be distanced and avoided. Disgust arises in many domains of human existence that can be traced back to two main spheres: the physical and the moral. As a matter of example, food, body products, corpses, intimate contact, etc., are to be counted among the physical objects that elicit disgust, whereas moral objects of disgust might be moral violations in human behaviour such as abuse, betrayal, hypocrisy, corruption, and the like. The function of disgust is to protect the subject who feels it from contamination. Disgust should not be confused either with distaste, as disgust is a deeper and stronger feeling of rejection, or with contempt, since disgust does not refer immediately to the intrinsic value of the concerned object. Disgust is mostly addressed by Philosophy of emotions, Aesthetics, and Political philosophy.
As a branch of Ontology, Philosophy of emotions wonders what disgust is, what it is for and to what extent propositions on disgust are valid. According to empirical researches, disgust seems to be a universal emotion among human beings (Ekman, Friesen 1976). By comparing facial expressions and their recognition, evidence has been found that at least the six basic emotions (that is, anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise) are expressed and recognised in similar ways in different parts of the world (Ekman 1972). This is a strong argument for claiming that an objective description of disgust is possible. Indeed there is general agreement with respect to the fact that disgust is facially exhibited by gaping the mouth, protruded lips, and even spitting; in its strongest instances the facial mimicry of the disgusted person is the same as in vomiting, which can actually occur; shutters and guttural sounds accompany it (Darwin 1872). Scientists stress the fact that such an experience presupposes beliefs to a certain degree (Rozin, Fallon 1987). Phenomenologists and philosophers of mind state that disgust is an intentional experience, that is, the form of directly being aware of disgusting objects (Kolnai 1929; Korsmeyer 2011; McGinn 2011).
Disgust entered the philosophical debate as a concept of Aesthetics (Franzini 2000). After 1970 (Clair 2004), it became one of the most interesting and controversial fields of contemporary Aesthetics with particular reference to contemporary art. According to many, disgust and disgusting elicitors not only break down the boundaries of representation in the fine arts, but also subvert the laws of beauty and taste established by classic Aesthetics (Menninghaus 1999; Perniola 1998), and above all dissolve the idea itself of form in the arts (Derrida 1975; Franzini 2000; Mazzocut-Mis 2009). This has made it impossible for the spectator to contemplate an artwork as a simple show, i.e. without being viscerally involved in what is represented in the latter. This situation sheds new light on the above discussed issue concerning the constituents of disgust: whether just revulsion, or revulsion + attraction. Indeed Korsmeyer (2011) and McGinn (2011) claim that disgust can elicit pleasure while offending our senses. However, Talon-Hugon (2003) had already argued that this is not always true: accordingly, she claimed that the more realistic a form of art is, the more it elicits mere disgust making any pleasure impossible and producing an actual divorce between the aesthetic attitude and the artwork itself.
During the 20th century, the strong moral implications always recognized to such emotion (i.e., Kolnai 1929) have been revealed as strictly political. Many have focused on the usage of disgust in order to create unjust hierarchies (A. Miller 1997), and discriminate (Nussbaum 2010). Others have insisted on the fact that disgust crucially helps in guiding societies (Devlin 1965; Kahan 1999), particularly for their legal regulation. The former wish to eliminate disgust from society, or at least to weaken it; the latter to strengthen it.
Humans have a natural ability to understand the emotions and feelings of others, whether one actually witnesses the situation of another, perceives it from a photograph, reads about it in a fiction book, or merely imagines it. This is the phenomenon of empathy, which requires us to mentally represent external information to experience the emotions of others. Studies have shown that individuals with high empathy have high anterior insula and adjacent frontal operculum activation when they are aware of negative emotions in others. As a negative emotion, disgust processing involves insula coupling. What are the neurophysiological characteristics for regulating the levels of empathy and disgust? To answer this question, we collected electroencephalogram microstates (EEG-ms) of 196 college students at rest and used the Disgust Scale and Interpersonal Reactivity Index. The results showed that: (1) there was a significant positive correlation between empathy and disgust sensitivity; (2) the empathy score and the intensity of transition possibility between EEG-ms C and D were significantly positively correlated; and (3) the connection strength between the transition possibility of EEG-ms C and D could adjust the relationship between the disgust sensitivity score and the empathy score. This study provides new neurophysiological characteristics for an understanding of the regulate relationship between empathy and disgust and provides a new perspective on emotion and attention. 041b061a72