MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Mícheál de Barra, PhD
Lecturer in Psychology
Brunel University London
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Disgust has been called the "intuitive microbiologist" - it tracks the sources of infection in our environment. But so far, there has been little attempt to link the sources of disgust to the sources of infectious disease in a comprehensive way. So we developed a method for developing stimuli based on a random sample illness.
We basically asked ourselves what the kinds of cues that might be associated with that kind of disease risk and asked people to rate disgust responses. The main motive for this was to contribute to a debate in the literature about if there are "kinds of disgust" and if so, how many. I results were a little ambiguous there I'm afraid.
(more…)
Mícheál de Barra, PhD
Lecturer in Psychology
Brunel University London
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: Disgust has been called the "intuitive microbiologist" - it tracks the sources of infection in our environment. But so far, there has been little attempt to link the sources of disgust to the sources of infectious disease in a comprehensive way. So we developed a method for developing stimuli based on a random sample illness.
We basically asked ourselves what the kinds of cues that might be associated with that kind of disease risk and asked people to rate disgust responses. The main motive for this was to contribute to a debate in the literature about if there are "kinds of disgust" and if so, how many. I results were a little ambiguous there I'm afraid.
(more…)