Department of Zoology, Faculty of Science, Charles University, Viničná 7, 128 44, Prague 2, Czech Republic.
National Institute of Mental Health, Topolová 748, 250 67, Klecany, Czech Republic.
Sci Rep. 2023 May 22;13(1):8206. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-35375-2.
The behavioral immune system, with disgust as its motivational part, serves as the first line of defense in organisms' protection against pathogens. Laboratory studies indicate that disgust sensitivity adaptively adjusts to simulated environmental threat, but whether disgust levels similarly change in response to real-life threats, such as a pandemic, remains largely unknown. In a preregistered within-subject study, we tested whether the threat posed by the Covid-19 pandemic would lead to increased perceived disgust. The perception of threat was induced by testing during two phases of the Covid-19 pandemic (periods of high vs. low pathogen threat). We found heightened levels of moral disgust during a "wave" of the pandemic, but the effect was not observed in the domain of pathogen or sexual disgust. Moreover, the age of respondents and levels of trait anxiety were positively associated with pathogen and moral disgust, suggesting that variation in disgust sensitivity may be based chiefly on stable characteristics.
行为免疫系统以厌恶为动机部分，是生物体抵御病原体的第一道防线。实验室研究表明，厌恶敏感度可以适应模拟环境威胁，但在现实生活威胁（如大流行）中，厌恶水平是否同样发生变化，在很大程度上尚不清楚。在一项预先注册的被试内研究中，我们测试了新冠疫情带来的威胁是否会导致人们对厌恶感的增强。通过在新冠疫情的两个阶段（高病原体威胁期与低病原体威胁期）进行测试来诱发威胁感。我们发现，在疫情“浪潮”期间，人们的道德厌恶感增强，但在病原体或性厌恶领域并未观察到这种影响。此外，被试的年龄和特质焦虑水平与病原体和道德厌恶感呈正相关，这表明厌恶敏感度的变化可能主要基于稳定的特征。
