The universal trigger for disgust is the feeling that something is offensive, poisonous or contaminating. We can feel disgusted by something we perceive with our physical senses (sight, smell, touch, sound, taste), by the actions and appearances of people, and even by ideas. Some triggers for disgust are universal (such as encountering certain bodily products) whereas other triggers are much more culturally and individually influenced (such as certain types of food).

There is an ongoing debate within the scientific community as to whether certain forms of interpersonal and social disgust (being disgusted by another person’s appearance, actions, ideas or social standing) are learned and culture-specific or whether they exist in some form across all cultures. For example, everyone may have disgust reactions to a “morally tainted” person, but what is considered “morally tainted” might vary across cultures.

COMMON DISGUST TRIGGERS:

• Expelled bodily products such as feces, vomit, urine, mucus and blood
  Certain foods (often from cultures other than our own)
• Something rotting, diseased or dying
• Injuries, surgeries and/or being exposed to bodily insides
• A person, animal or thing one considers physically ugly
• Perceived perversions or actions of other people (such as certain sexual inclinations, torture or servitude)

DEVELOPMENT OF DISGUST

Children and adolescents often have a fascination with disgust as do some adults (including finding disgusting things humorous and/or intriguing). For young children, however, disgust doesn’t begin to develop until sometime between the ages of four and eight. Before that emotional development, children experience distaste, the rejection of things that taste bad, but not disgust.

Additional studies have shown that kids aren’t bothered by some of the things that adults find disgusting (e.g., eating a bar of chocolate shaped like dog feces). One theory is that when we are younger, we do not yet have the cognitive capacity necessary for certain forms of learned disgust.