Trypophobia is a relatively common aversion to clusters of holes. There is no consensus yet on which emotions are involved in Trypophobia nor in its functional utility. This report investigates the role of disgust using contamination tasks in two studies, which contrast people with an aversion to trypophobic stimuli to those without. In Study 1, participants reported their emotional reactions to imagined contamination of trypophobic images. In Study 2, participants evaluated physically present trypophobic, disgust, fear, and control stimuli. The capacity of these stimuli to contaminate other objects was established using a chain of contagion task. Across both studies, contamination was present, however, only those with an aversion to trypophobic stimuli evidenced contamination on the chain of contagion task, a hallmark of disgust responding. Elevated levels were not only reported for disgust, but also alongside fear/anxiety. Participant reports suggest an underlying disease avoidance mechanism in Trypophobia, with trypophobic participants demonstrating an exaggerated response to such stimuli involving disgust and fear/anxiety, which is also seen in small animal phobia, BII, and C-OCD. Implications, particularly for treatment are discussed.

This study investigates whether a not informative, irrelevant emotional reaction of disgust interferes with decision-making under uncertainty. We manipulate the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) by associating a disgust-eliciting image with selections from Disadvantageous/Bad decks (Congruent condition) or Advantageous/Good decks (Incongruent condition). A Control condition without manipulations is also included. Results indicate an increased probability of selecting from a Good deck as the task unfolds in all conditions. However, this effect is modulated by the experimental manipulation. Specifically, we detect a detrimental effect (i.e., a significant decrease in the intercept) of the disgust-eliciting image in Incongruent condition (vs. Control), but this effect is limited to the early stages of the task (i.e., first twenty trials). No differences in performance trends are detected between Congruent and Control conditions. Anticipatory Skin Conductance Response, heart rate, and pupil dilation are also assessed as indexes of anticipatory autonomic activation following the Somatic Marker Hypothesis, but no effects are shown for the first two indexes in any of the conditions. Only a decreasing trend is detected for pupil dilation as the task unfolds in Control and Incongruent conditions. Results are discussed in line with the \"risk as feelings\" framework, the Somatic Marker Hypothesis, and IGT literature.

The emotion of disgust protects individuals against pathogens, and it has been found to be elevated during pregnancy. Physiological mechanisms discussed in relation to these changes include immune markers and progesterone levels. This study aimed to assess the association between steroids and disgust sensitivity in pregnancy. Using a prospective longitudinal design, we analyzed blood serum steroid concentrations and measured disgust sensitivity via text-based questionnaires in a sample of 179 pregnant women during their first and third trimesters. We found positive correlations between disgust sensitivity and the levels of C19 steroids (including testosterone) and its precursors in the Δ5 pathway (androstenediol, DHEA, and their sulfates) and the Δ4 pathway (androstenedione). Additionally, positive correlations were observed with 5α/β-reduced C19 steroid metabolites in both trimesters. In the first trimester, disgust sensitivity was positively associated with 17-hydroxypregnanolone and with some estrogens. In the third trimester, positive associations were observed with cortisol and immunoprotective Δ5 C19 7α/β-hydroxy-steroids. Our findings show that disgust sensitivity is positively correlated with immunomodulatory steroids, and in the third trimester, with steroids which may be related to potential maternal-anxiety-related symptoms. This study highlights the complex relationship between hormonal changes and disgust sensitivity during pregnancy.

UNASSIGNED: It has been suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic was a potentially traumatic occurrence that may have induced generalized anxiety and discomfort, particularly in susceptible populations like individuals with mental illnesses. The therapeutic approach known as eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) has been shown to be successful in helping patients process traumatic events and restore wellbeing. Nevertheless, little is known about the precise processes through which EMDR fosters symptom recovery.
UNASSIGNED: In order to disentangle these issues, we conducted a randomized controlled trial (ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier NCT06110702) with 107 participants who were selected from university hospitals as a sample of investigation. Random assignments were applied to the participants in order to assign them to the experimental and control groups. The experimental group, but not the control group, underwent an 8-week EMDR intervention. Body perception, disgust, and emotions of guilt and shame, as well as mental contamination and posttraumatic and obsessive-compulsive symptoms, were investigated before and after the EMDR intervention.
UNASSIGNED: The EMDR intervention was able to improve all of the variables investigated. Path analysis showed that body perception was able to predict both disgust and emotions of guilt and shame. Disgust was able to predict both mental contamination and obsessive-compulsive symptoms, while guilt and shame were able to predict post-traumatic symptoms.
UNASSIGNED: EMDR is an effective therapy for the treatment of post-traumatic and obsessive symptoms that acts through the promotion of improvement of the emotions of guilt/shame and disgust, respectively. Implications for clinical practice are examined.
UNASSIGNED: https://www.clinicaltrials.gov, identifier NCT06110702.

UNASSIGNED: Disgust sensitivity to body odors plays a role in a set of psychological mechanisms supposedly evolved to avoid pathogens. To assess individual differences in body odor disgust, we previously developed the body odor disgust scale (BODS) and validated it in English. The BODS presents six scenarios where disgust could be evoked by smells coming from an internal source and an external source. The present study aimed to validate the BODS in the Italian population and to find further evidence for its structural, construct, and criterion validity.
UNASSIGNED: We used two large samples (N = 1,050, F = 527; and N = 402, F = 203, respectively) that were representative of the Italian population for sex and age.
UNASSIGNED: Across these two studies, we confirmed the hypothesized bifactor structure, with all the items loading onto a general body odor disgust sensitivity factor, and on two specific factors related to the internal structure. In terms of construct validity, we found that the BODS converged with pathogen disgust sensitivity of the three-domain disgust scale (TDDS) but was distinct from a general propensity to experience negative emotions. The BODS showed criterion validity in predicting the behavioral intentions toward COVID-19 avoidance behavior, although it did not seem to be incrementally valid when compared to the TDDS pathogen subscale. We also established scalar measurement invariance of the BODS regarding gender and found that women display higher levels of BODS.
UNASSIGNED: Results from the Italian version of the BODS indicate its structural, construct, nomological and criterion validity. Furthermore, our result on sex differences in disgust sensitivity are consistent with previous literature, and we discuss them in the broader context of cross-cultural and primate findings that points toward a possible evolutionary explanation of this difference.

BACKGROUND: Understanding the emotional context of feeding behavior may help identify causal mechanisms of food avoidance among individuals with anorexia nervosa. Although predominant food avoidance models assume fear of fat drives feeding behavior, disgust may be more theoretically and proximally relevant to moment-to-moment experiences of feeding. This study, therefore, aimed to examine affect and food avoidance using automated affect analysis from facial response by measuring time-specific transitions in disgust during a laboratory eating paradigm. We hypothesized that phase transitions in disgust would distinguish temporally self-initiated eating from food avoidance.
METHODS: Sixty-three adolescents with anorexia nervosa or another low-weight eating disorder (LWED) and 27 age- and sex-matched controls were recruited as part of a larger study; 45 patients and 22 controls provided data on autonomous eating and facial affect during a laboratory meal. Dynamic structural equation models quantified moment-to-moment relationships between disgust and feeding behavior.
RESULTS: Self-initiated eating was associated with greater increases in disgust, but not fear, intensity among those with LWED relative to control participants and greater disgust intensity predicted lower likelihood of self-initiated eating.
CONCLUSIONS: Phasic transitions in disgust provide moment-to-moment evidence of affective influence on self-initiated eating and lend credibility to the hypothesis that disgust contributes to food avoidance and initiation in individuals with LWED.

In the processing of emotions, the brain prepares and reacts in distinctive manners depending upon the negative or positive nuance of the emotion elicitors. Previous investigations showed that negative elicitors generally evoke more intense neural activities than positive and neutral ones, as reflected in the augmented amplitude of all sub-components of the event-related potentials (ERP) late posterior positivity (LPP) complex, while less is known about the emotion of disgust. The present study aimed to examine whether the LPP complex during the processing of disgust stimuli showed greater amplitude than other emotion elicitors with negative or positive valences, thus confirming it as a neural marker of disgust-related negativity bias at earlier or later stages. Thus, in the present study, we leveraged the ERP technique during the execution of an affective self-administered visual stimuli task to disentangle the neural contributions associated with images of positive, negative, disgust, or neutral emotions. Crucially, we showed that handling with disgust elicitors prompted the greatest neural activity and the highest delay during self-administration. Overall, we demonstrated progressive neural activities associated with the unpleasantness of the emotion elicitors and peculiar processing for disgust compared with all other emotions.

Pavlovian fear conditioning and extinction represent learning mechanisms underlying exposure-based interventions. While increasing evidence indicates a pivotal role of disgust in the development of contamination-based obsessive-compulsive disorder (C-OCD), dysregulations in conditioned disgust acquisition and maintenance, in particular driven by higher-order conceptual processes, have not been examined. Here, we address this gap by exposing individuals with high (HCC, n = 41) or low (LCC, n = 41) contamination concern to a conceptual-level disgust conditioning and extinction paradigm. Conditioned stimuli (CS+) were images from one conceptual category partially reinforced by unconditioned disgust-eliciting stimuli (US), while images from another category served as non-reinforced conditioned stimuli (CS-). Skin conductance responses (SCRs), US expectancy and CS valence ratings served as primary outcomes to quantify conditioned disgust responses. Relative to LCC, HCC individuals exhibited increased US expectancy and CS+ disgust experience, but comparable SCR levels following disgust acquisition. Despite a decrease in conditioned responses from the acquisition phase to the extinction phase, both groups did not fully extinguish the learned disgust. Importantly, the extinction resilience of acquired disgust was more pronounced in HCC individuals. Together, our findings suggest that individuals with high self-reported contamination concern exhibit increased disgust acquisition and resistance to extinction. The findings provide preliminary evidence on how dysregulated disgust learning mechanism across semantically related concepts may contribute to C-OCD.

UNASSIGNED: Premenstrual dysphoric disorder is a depressive disorder affecting 5%-8% of people with menstrual cycles. Despite evidence that facial emotion detection is altered in depressive disorders, with enhanced detection of negative emotions (negativity bias), minimal research exists on premenstrual dysphoric disorder.
UNASSIGNED: The goal of this study was to investigate the effect of premenstrual dysphoric disorder symptoms and the premenstrual phase on accuracy and intensity at detection of facial emotions.
UNASSIGNED: Cross-sectional quasi-experimental design.
UNASSIGNED: The Facial Emotion Detection Task was administered to 72 individuals assigned female at birth with no premenstrual dysphoric disorder (n = 30), and provisional PMDD (n = 42), based on a retrospective Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-Fifth Edition-based measure of premenstrual dysphoric disorder. Facial emotion detection was examined both irrespective of menstrual cycle phase, and as a function of premenstrual phase (yes, no). The task used neutral-to-emotional facial expression morphs (15 images/morph). Participants indicated the emotion detected for each image within the progressive intensity morph. For all six basic emotions (sad, angry, fearful, happy, disgust, and surprise), two scores were calculated: accuracy of responses and the intensity within the morph at which the correct emotion was first detected (image number).
UNASSIGNED: Individuals reporting moderate/severe symptoms of premenstrual dysphoric disorder had more accurate and earlier detection of disgust, regardless of cycle phase. In addition, those with provisional premenstrual dysphoric disorder detected sad emotions earlier. A premenstrual dysphoric disorder group × cycle phase interaction also emerged: individuals reporting premenstrual dysphoric disorder symptoms were more accurate at detecting facial emotions during the premenstrual phase compared to the rest of the cycle, with a large effect size for sad emotions.
UNASSIGNED: The findings suggest enhanced facial emotion processing in individuals reporting symptoms of premenstrual dysphoric disorder, particularly for sadness and disgust. However, replication is required with larger samples and prospective designs. This premenstrual dysphoric disorder premenstrual emotion detection advantage suggests an adaptive cognitive mechanism in premenstrual syndrome/premenstrual dysphoric disorder, and challenges stigma surrounding premenstrual experiences.
Women with Severe Premenstrual Syndrome or Probable Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder are Better at Identifying Emotional Expressions on People’s Faces, Especially During the Premenstrual PhasePremenstrual dysphoric disorder is a depressive disorder affecting women where they experience emotional and physical symptoms during the premenstrual phase (i.e. the week before one’s period). It is a severe form of premenstrual syndrome. Research indicates that depression can affect facial emotion recognition. Accurately recognizing other people’s emotions is an important skill that helps us develop social connections and keep ourselves and others safe. Quick recognition of facial emotions allows us to understand and support others, and quickly identify dangerous situations by recognizing other people’s emotional responses. The goal of this study was to examine how premenstrual dysphoric disorder symptoms and the premenstrual phase may affect the ability of women to recognize and identify emotions on other people’s faces. A total of 72 women (42 with premenstrual dysphoric disorder, 30 without premenstrual dysphoric disorder) completed the Facial Emotion Detection Task. This task measured how accurate and early the women were able to detect happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust in faces. Women with moderate/severe symptoms of premenstrual dysphoric disorder had more accurate and earlier detection of disgust, regardless of where they were in their menstrual cycle. Women with premenstrual dysphoric disorder detected sad emotions earlier. Furthermore, women with premenstrual dysphoric disorder were more accurate at detecting facial emotions when they were tested in the premenstrual phase, and were especially more accurate in detecting sad emotions. The findings suggest that women with premenstrual dysphoric disorder are better at detecting facial emotions and show a premenstrual dysphoric disorder premenstrual emotion detection advantage. This tendency for women with premenstrual dysphoric disorder to better detect emotions in others, particularly when they are in the premenstrual cycle phase, would have benefits. As one of the first reports of a potentially beneficial effect of premenstrual syndrome for women, the findings may help decrease stigma associated with premenstrual dysphoric disorder and premenstrual syndrome. Further research is needed to replicate and extend these findings.

暂无摘要。