Body, Psyche, and Culture: The Relationship between Disgust and Morality

TLDR

Core disgust is an evolutionarily rooted, food‑related emotion that is also shaped by culture. The study proposes a mechanism that defines disgust elicitors as a prototypically categorized set grounded in embodied schemata. The authors conducted cross‑cultural analyses of disgust across Israeli, Japanese, Greek, and Hopi cultures and explain its expansion through embodied schemata. Seven disgust elicitor categories—food, animals, body products, sexual deviance, body‑envelope violations, poor hygiene, and death contact—were identified, and the authors found that disgust has expanded from food to social and moral domains across cultures, with each culture drawing on embodied schemata to shape its social and moral life.

Abstract

"Core disgust" is a food related emotion that is rooted in evolution but is also a cultural product. Seven categories of disgust elicitors have been observed in an American sample. These include food, animals, body products, sexual de viance, body-envelope violations, poor hygiene, and contact with death. In addition, social concerns such as interpersonal contamination and socio- moral violations are also associated with disgust. Cross-cultural analyses of disgust and its elicitors using Israeli, Japanese, Greek and Hopi notions of disgust were undertaken. It was noted that disgust elicitors have expanded from food to the social order and have been found in many cultures. Expla nations for this expansion are provided in terms of embodied schemata, which refer to imaginative structures or patterns of experience that are based on bodily knowledge or sensation. A mechanism is suggested whereby disgust elicitors are viewed as a prototypically defined category involving many of the embodied schemata of disgust. It is argued that each culture draws upon these schemata and its social and moral life is based on them.