Disgust and contempt

He watched as I ate canned food from a tin can, brought by me to this distant village inhabited by the people of the Faure tribe. When I noticed that he was watching me, and saw the expression on his face, then I put down the plug and took up the camera that always hung on my neck. (Fortunately, the people of the Faure tribe did not yet know what the camera was intended for, and they quickly got used to the fact that I put this strange object on my eye for no apparent reason; therefore, they usually did not hesitate and turn away when I photographed them .)

The story behind this picture shows the importance of observing how a person absorbs something that offends the taste of an observer.
The man of the Faure tribe did not even try my canned goods; the mere sight of how I ate them was enough to cause his negative feelings. ^[148]
Thirty years ago I described disgust as:

... a manifestation of antipathy. The taste of something that you want to spit out immediately, or even the thought of having to eat something like that can make you disgusted. The smell that makes you stop your nose also makes you disgusted. Again, disgust can arise from even the very thought of how disgusting such a smell is. Disgust can make you look at something that you may find offensive to taste or smell. You may be disgusted by sounds if they are associated with an event that you hate. Also, the touch of something contrary, such as slippery or gelatinous, can cause a feeling of disgust. Not only tastes, smells, touches, visual images or sounds can cause disgust, but also the actions and appearance of people or even their ideas. Sometimes people can have a disgusting appearance, and it’s just disgusting to look at them. Some people are disgusted when they see a cripple or a person with an ugly appearance. Disgusting can be caused by a person injured in an accident with multiple open wounds. The sight of blood or the work of a surgeon performing an operation also causes a feeling of disgust in some people. Some people's actions also look repulsive. A person who tortures his dog or cat may be disgusting to his neighbors. Disgust can cause a person to do what others call sexual perversions. A life philosophy or way of treating people degrading to human dignity can also cause disgust. [149]

Since then, my observations have been reinforced and developed through the research of virtually one and only scientist engaged in the study of disgust. Psychologist Paul Rozin, a man who perfectly knows how to appreciate good food, is sure that the basis of disgust is the feeling that something appears in the mouth that is considered disgusting or spreading infection; in accordance with my terminology, this would be called the topic of disgust. However, in different cultures there are different ideas about what is considered disgusting. A photograph of a New Guinean man perfectly illustrates this point: the look and smell of food that I find appetizing cause him disgust. But similar differences can be observed within the same culture. For example, my wife likes to eat raw oysters, but I just can't stand them. In some areas of China, dog meat is considered a delicacy, and for most Europeans the prospect of trying such a delicacy is not a delight. But there are also general patterns in what causes disgust.
Rozin discovered that the most powerful universal triggers are the products of our body functioning: feces, vomiting, urine, mucus and blood. In 1955, an eminent American psychologist Gordon Allport suggested a “thought experiment” with disgust, an experiment that you perform in your mind to check whether what he is proposing is really going on. “First, think about swallowing the saliva that has accumulated in your mouth, or just swallow it. Then imagine that you spit it in a glass and then drink it! What seemed natural and “their own” suddenly becomes disgusting and alien. ” ^[150] Rozin did conduct this experiment, suggesting that people drink a glass of water after they spat at it, and found that Allport was right. Even though the saliva was in their mouth a moment earlier, they did not agree to drink water containing their own spittle. Rozin claims that as soon as the product of our body’s activity leaves our body, it becomes disgusting to us.
Disgust does not arise as an independent emotion until the child reaches the age of four to eight years. Until this age, there is dislike, the refusal is something that has an unpleasant taste, but not disgust. Rosin asked children and adults to touch or eat chocolate candy, which looked like dog feces. Children at the age of four to seven years did not bother this task at all, but most adults refused to do it. Similarly, children under the age of four will quietly drink juice or milk if you deliberately throw disinfected grasshopper at it. ^[151]
Children and adolescents are often fascinated by objects that cause disgust. Rozin reminds us that the novelty stores sell very realistic imitations of vomiting, mucus and excrement and the main buyers of such products are teenage boys. There is a whole series of anecdotes dedicated to various forms of disgust. Some popular TV shows for children and adolescents often show situations in which the main characters demonstrate their disgust.
Professor of Law, William Miller, in his fascinating book The Anatomy of Disgust ( The Anatomy of Disgust ) notes that disgust fascinates not only children: "[Disgust] ... has its own charm, its charm, which is manifested in the fact that it is difficult for us to look away from severe catastrophes ... or just how attractive horror films turn out to be for us ... ^[152] Our own snot, urine and feces are perceived as something harmful and disgust with us, but we show touching attention and curiosity about them ...
We look at our selection more often than we admit it ... because many people carefully examine their handkerchief after blowing their nose into it. ” ^{[153] The} box office success of such rude films as “ There's Something About Mary ” was achieved not only by the adolescent audience.
Rozin makes a distinction between what he calls interpersonal aversion and basic disgust. ^[154] He lists four groups of learned interpersonal triggers: unfamiliar, sick, unhappy, and morally corrupt. The research I conducted with Maurin O'Sullivan allowed me to get several results confirming the correctness of Rosin's assumptions. We asked college students to write down the strongest feelings of disgust, which, in their view, people could ever experience. Rozin's proposed topic of infection from food that enters the mouth (for example, you have to eat something that causes vomiting in another person) was actually mentioned, but only in 11% of respondents. The most commonly called trigger of extreme aversion (as mentioned by 62% of respondents) arose from a reaction to morally reprehensible behavior (for example, the reaction of American soldiers who saw traces of Nazi atrocities in concentration camps). Nearly half of the actions, which were repulsive and morally condemned, were associated with acts of sexual violence, especially against children. The last group of cases, mentioned by about 18% of respondents, consisted of physical rejection histories that had nothing to do with food, for example, the discovery of a corpse with worms swarming in it. ^[155]
Earlier, I noted that basic disgust, according to Rosin, is a topic of emotion and that if he is right in the sense that the four forms of interpersonal disgust - to the unfamiliar, sick, unhappy and morally spoiled - are learned, then they would be variations of the theme . However, it seems to me possible that these four interpersonal forms of aversion are also themes that can be found in any culture with its own specific characteristics, conditioned by learning, which will be different among different individuals, social groups and cultures. For example, anyone may show a reaction of disgust at a morally corrupt person, but what is a sign of moral depravity may change. What is unfamiliar and familiar and what is unhappiness also depends on the circumstances, and only the attitude towards the disease is probably the same everywhere. Those who have physical flaws, purulent wounds and other defects can cause disgust in every culture.
Miller points out that cultures have more freedom in terms of including objects or actions in the area of ​​aversion caused, than in terms of excluding them from it. This observation corresponds exactly to the ideas discussed in sections 2, 3, and 4, where I argued that people's emotional readiness databases are open, not closed. These databases, together with programs that direct our reactions to our changing emotions, are never empty when we come to light; evolution has already written its instructions on how we should react and how sensitive we should be with each reaction. As Miller points out, these databases and instructions are difficult to change, but since the databases are open, we can assimilate new triggers and new emotional responses.
Although both the Japanese and Americans show a reaction of aversion to spoiled food or to getting something unpleasant in their mouths, Rozin found differences in their manifestation of social aversion. A person who does not fit into the social system or unjustly criticizes others is disgusted with the Japanese. Americans were disgusted by racists and people who were extremely cruel. However, not all social aversion generally varies from culture to culture. Rosin found that in many cultures, politicians are repugnant to people!
In addition to the four types of interpersonal aversion described by Rozin, the existence of another type of aversion, which I call disgust from satiation, derives from the results of a study conducted by psychologists John Gottman, Erica Woodin and Robert Levenson. Their research deserves special attention, since they turned out to be the only scientists who accurately measured the expression of emotions during one of the most emotionally intense and most important social interactions in our life - the interaction between husband and wife. ^[156]
Surprisingly, the expressions of disgust with the wife, addressed to the husband during the conversation started to resolve the conflict, made it possible to predict the amount of time that they would live apart over the next four years. ^[157] Gottman discovered that expressions of disgust in his wife usually arose in response to the husband’s attempt to isolate herself from her with a “stone wall” (which I already mentioned), that is, to ignore her emotions. In simple terms, she got what she wanted; she was fed up. Note how well the meal metaphor fits this situation. If your spouse makes you hostile, then it is not surprising that the future of your relationship looks bleak. (We will return to the results obtained by Gottman at the end of this section, when we talk about contempt.)
Miller notes that in close relationships, we reduce sensitivity to what is usually disgusted with us. The very first example is “changing diapers, wiping out spit food, and other actions to care for a sick child. Parents are those people who will take care in all circumstances; they will clean up the excrement, at the risk of getting their hands and clothes dirty; suffer when they are drenched in urine. Overcoming natural aversion to such substances is a characteristic feature of unconditional parental love. ” ^[158]
A similar temporary elimination of aversion is observed in participants in sexual intercourse. Once again, I will quote Miller: “The tongue of another person in your mouth can be a sign of intimacy, but it can also be an insulting insult ... Sex by mutual attraction means mutual violation of borders protected by a feeling of disgust ... Sex is only one way of breaking such borders implying one type of nudity. But there are other forms of nudity, openness and knowledge on which intensive intimate relationships are based - relationships in the form of long, close and gentle mutual contact.
Someone thinks about sharing their doubts, anxieties, worries; to talk about their aspirations; admit to mistakes and shortcomings; just to show ourselves as a person who has his quirks, weaknesses and needs ... We could call a friend or a loved one the one whom we allow to cry on our waistcoat, in order to then in turn cry on his waistcoat, the one who understands that such an exchange complaining about the difficulties of life is the privilege of intimate relationships, which our self-esteem and our disgust would not allow in the absence of such a privilege ... Love gives another person the privilege of looking at us in a way that makes We would like to experience the shame and disgust ^[159] from other people, if it were not for the intervention of love. " ^[160]
This remarkably subtle observation of Miller indicates the presence of a social function in aversion, which in other conditions would have been invisible. The temporary suppression of disgust creates a relationship of intimacy and serves as a symbol of personal devotion. Such an assumption that the other person might be considered shameful, involvement in physical activity that with the other person would seem disgusting - I mean not only sex, but, for example, the need to remove the vomit mass is not necessarily for a loved one, but also for completely unfamiliar to you, man, can be not only a sign of love, but also a means of its amplification.
Another very important function of disgust is to force us to distance ourselves from the disgusting and repulsive. Obviously, no one is benefited by the consumption of spoiled products, and social disgust in a similar way isolates us from what we consider reprehensible.
It, as Miller suggests, is a moral evaluation in which we can not compromise with people who cause our disgust or their actions. Jurist Martha Nussbaum writes that "most societies teach to avoid certain groups of people on the grounds that they cause physical disgust." ^[161] Unfortunately, this emotion can be dangerous, as it deprives the human qualities of people whom we consider to be disgusting, and thus makes it possible not to treat them as ordinary human beings.
Some actions are deemed inadmissible on the grounds that they insult public morality (cause disgust), such as child pornography or foul language. Nussbaum is confident that the laws should not be based on the fact that someone finds the perfect action disgusting, and suggests that we use not insult, but insult as the basis for legal assessments. “[Insulting] ... is a moral sense, much more suitable for legal evaluation and much more reliable than disgust. It contains an argument that can be spread publicly, and does not imply controversial attempts to deal with such a criminal, like a nonentity or a slacker, outside of the morality of our society. Instead, it firmly incorporates it into the moral community and evaluates its actions based on public morality. ” ^[162] Noting that a person’s emotional state at the time the crime was committed can be viewed as a mitigating factor, Nussbaum also argues that disgust is not an emotion that should be taken into account. “One murder is not a more serious crime than another, just because it causes more disgust ... ^{[163] A} reasonable reaction to disgust,” she says, “is the way out of the situation, precluding the murder of a person who causes you disgust - for example, sticking to you homosexual. [Only] ... the feeling caused by someone else in you is never a sufficient reason to carry out violent acts against this person. ” ^[164]
Those who justify the worst forms of lowering the status of other people often see their victims as animals (and not the most attractive ones); sometimes victims are spoken of as inanimate objects that offend our feelings, calling them garbage or scum. I fear that indignation or insult can also justify bloodshed or even torture, but they should not build a barrier between us and those who cause us disgust. (Nussbaum, of course, focuses on using emotions to justify laws, not to justify actions, illegal or not.) One of the obstacles that can deter the intended violence is the appearance and cries of the victims, as well as their blood. But this factor does not always work, perhaps because the form of other people's suffering causes disgust.Even if we don’t start to think of someone as the source of our disgust, the sight of blood and a body that was disfigured as a result of torture or injury may cause even more disgust, not sympathy.
At the beginning of my research of expressions of emotions in different cultures, I found that films about suffering people — films about the performance of circumcision by the natives or eye surgery — caused an expression of disgust for most of the students I examined in America and Japan. I edited other educational medical films - one showed limb removal, accompanied by a large loss of blood, and the other showed a person with a third degree of burns, who had burned scabs from his body. Again, most viewers reported disgust and showed their disgust on their face. Films could replace each other, as they caused the same emotion and were among the most common "kinostimuli" used in the study of emotions.
However, there was a relatively small group of students (about 20%), which showed very diverse reactions to the suffering of other people in the films. Instead of disgust, they expressed sadness and pain as if they identified themselves with those who were subjected to operations.
It seems that nature created us in such a way that we are disgusted at the sight of the internal organs of other people, especially covered with blood. Such a reaction of aversion is temporarily suspended when we see a bleeding person, not an outsider, but a person close to us. In this case, we are trying to ease the suffering, and not to turn away from it. Everyone can imagine how disgust at the sight of manifestations of physical suffering, illness can be beneficial in terms of preventing the spread of infection, but this result is achieved at the cost of reducing our ability to sympathy and compassion, which can be very useful for the formation of community of people.
Neither sympathy (empathy) nor compassion is an emotion; they are only our reactions to the emotions of others. Withcognitive empathy, we are aware of what the other person feels. With emotional empathy, we really feel what the other person feels; with compassionate empathy, we want to help another person cope with the situation and with his emotions. We must have cognitive empathy in order to manifest two other forms of empathy, but we do not need to have emotional empathy in order to show compassionate empathy. ^{[165] [166]}
Contempt is akin to disgust, but still different from it. I could not find a single photograph in the press illustrating this emotion; like disgust, it is also rarely shown on newspaper and magazine shots. An example of a person expressing contempt can be seen in Figure 3 at the end of this section.
Many years ago I determined the difference between contempt and disgust as follows:

Contempt can only be felt towards people or their actions, but not towards tastes, smells or touches. Stepping on dog excrement, you may experience disgust, but not contempt; the idea of ​​eating raw calf brains can also cause disgust, but not contempt. However, you can treat with disdain to people who eat such unappetizing products, because in contempt there is an element of condescension towards those who cause this contempt. Showing in your dislike of people and their actions an element of neglect, you feel your superiority (usually moral) towards them. Their behavior is disgusting, but you feel disdain for them and do not necessarily break off relations with them. [167]

Unfortunately, as for contempt, there was no second Paul Rosin here and none of the scientists concentrated all their efforts on studying this emotion. Miller made an interesting remark that although we feel superior to another person when we feel contempt for him, however, subordinates may also feel contempt for their superiors. Think about the "contempt of adolescents for adults, women for men, servants for the masters, workers for the bosses ... black for white, uneducated for the educated. ^[168]Contempt coming from the bottom up ... allows those in a lower position to declare their superiority in some parameter. People at lower levels know that they have a low position in the eyes of others, know that they are to some extent despised by these other people ... " ^[169]
To better understand the meaning of contempt, let's consider the following set of interesting research results marital relationship held by Gottman and his colleagues. Wives whose husbands showed contempt:

• felt overwhelmed with emotions;
• believed that their problems could not be resolved;
• believed that their marital problems were very serious;
• often ill for the next four years.

The fact that expressions of disgust, contempt or anger that appeared in the husbands of these women did not evoke such results emphasizes the importance of highlighting contempt as an independent emotion (which is not yet recognized by all who study emotions).
Contempt, like all the emotions already considered by us, can change in strength or intensity, just as aversion does. I suspect that the upper limit of the intensity of aversion is higher than the upper limit of the intensity of contempt, that is, the maximum intensity of contempt is weaker than the maximum intensity of aversion.
Disgust, of course, is a negative emotion, it does not feel positive, even though, as noted earlier, we are fascinated by the fact that it causes disgust, much stronger than this might be expected. Of course, when the aversion is strong, the sensations are certainly unpleasant and can even cause nausea. But I am less sure that contempt is also a negative emotion; I know that the feeling of contempt for others gives pleasure to most people. Later we ourselves may be surprised that we felt this way, but the sensations we experience during this emotion are more pleasant than unpleasant. This does not mean that such an emotion has a beneficial effect on other people, and the results of Gottman confirm this conclusion. But our feelings in those moments when we feel contempt, are not initially unpleasant. It is difficult to define the function of contempt otherwise than as a function of giving a signal about the experienced sense of superiority, about the absence of the need for something to adapt or to do something. It reports strength or status. Those who are not confident in their status may be more likely to show contempt for asserting their superiority over others.
Contempt is often accompanied by anger - usually moderate anger in the form of discontent, although it can occur without anger at all. Sometimes a person’s anger can alternate with disgust if a person is angry that he has to experience disgust.
We do not have words to describe moods related to disgust or contempt, but this does not mean that we do not experience such sentiments, but only that we do not have a simple way to address them. I suspect that such sentiments do exist, but I don’t know about any theoretical or practical research on this topic.
Let us now find out whether there are emotional disorders implying disgust or contempt. In their article entitled “Disgust — The Forgotten Emotion in Psychiatry,” psychiatrists M. Phillips, C. Senior, T. Fahey, and A. David argue that although disgust is not recognized as crucial in mental disorders, it does play a prominent role in the occurrence of many mental problems. ^{[170] The} anxiety that occurs with disgust is probably the result of the introduction of obsessive-compulsive disorder, manifested in obsessive thoughts about dirty and contagious objects and an excessive desire to wash hands and body. Fears of animals can be based on disgust, social phobias in which a person is afraid to be humiliated may imply aversion that is concentrated by the person on himself, and fear of the sight of blood implies the onset of a nervous breakdown at the same time as disgust. People with eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia, have a strong feeling of disgust for parts of their own body, for their sexuality and for some foods. To date, no one has yet declared the existence of any mental disorders associated with contempt.