The Handbook of Disgust Research

This volume brings together the world's leading experts on disgust to fully explore this understudied behavior. Disgust is unique among emotions. It is, at once, perhaps the most "basic" and visceral of feelings while also being profoundly shaped by learning and culture. Evident from the earliest months of life, disgust influences individual behavior and shapes societies across political, social, economic, legal, ecological, and health contexts. As an emotion that evolved to prevent our eating contaminated foods, disgust is now known to motivate wider behaviors, social processes, and customs. On a global scale, disgust finds a place in population health initiatives, from hand hygiene to tobacco warning labels, and may underlie aversions to globalization and other progressive agendas, such as those regarding sustainable consumption and gay marriage.

This comprehensive work provides cutting-edge, timely, and succinct theoretical and empirical contributions illustrating thebreadth, rigor, relevance, and increasing maturity of disgust research to modern life. It is relevant to a wide range of psychological research and is particularly important to behavior viewed through an evolutionary lens, As such, it will stimulate further research and clinical applications that allow for a broader conceptualization of human behavior.

The reader will find:

Succinct and accessible summaries of key perspectives

Highlights of new scientific developments

A rich blend of theoretical and empirical chapters

Disgust Research Comes of Age.- Disgust: inductions, methods, and measurement.- The evolution of disgust, parasites and the behavioral immune system.- Disgust and olfaction/perception.- The neuroscience and physiology of disgust.- Developmental changes in disgust.- Morality, disgust and the sociocultural fabric.- Individual differences in disgust.- Disgust and mental health.- Disgust, prejudice and stigma.- Disgust and chronic health conditions.- Disgust and interpersonal relationships/sex.- Disgust, diet, food selection, and nutrition.- Disgust and public health.- Disgust and consumer behavior.- Ruling by disgust: politics and power.- Disgust and the law.- Disgust research into the future.