School of Psychological Science, University of Bristol, Bristol, United Kingdom.
Department of Psychology, Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2024 Apr 17;19(4):e0299429. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0299429. eCollection 2024.
Countless workers handle bodily effluvia and body envelope violations every working day, and consequentially face deeply unpleasant levels of disgust. Understanding if and how they adapt can help inform policies to improve worker satisfaction and reduce staff turnover. So far, limited evidence exist that self-reported disgust is reduced (or lower to begin with) among those employed in high-disgust environments. However, it is unclear if this is due to demand effects or translates into real behavioural changes. Here, we tested healthcare assistants (N = 32) employed in UK care homes and a control sample (N = 50). We replicated reduced self-reported pathogen disgust sensitivity in healthcare workers compared to controls. We also found it negatively correlated with career duration, suggesting long-term habituation. Furthermore, we found that healthcare assistants showed no behavioural disgust avoidance on a web-based preferential looking task (equivalent to eye tracking). Surprisingly, this extended to disgust elicitors found outside care homes, suggesting generalisation of disgust habituation. While we found no difference between bodily effluvia (core disgust) and body envelope violations (gore disgust), generalisation did not extend to other domains: self-reported sexual and moral disgust sensitivity were not different between healthcare assistants and the control group, nor was there a correlation with career duration. In sum, our work confirms that people in high-frequency disgust employment are less sensitive to pathogen disgust. Crucially, we provide preliminary evidence that this is due to a process of long-term habituation with generalisation to disgust-elicitors within the pathogen domain, but not beyond it.
无数劳动者每天都要处理身体排泄物和侵犯身体边界的问题，因此会面临极度令人厌恶的程度。了解他们是否以及如何适应这些工作，可以帮助制定相关政策，提高劳动者的满意度并降低员工流失率。到目前为止，有限的证据表明，在高厌恶环境中工作的人（如果有的话），自我报告的厌恶感会降低（或从一开始就较低）。然而，目前尚不清楚这是由于需求效应还是转化为实际的行为变化。在这里，我们测试了英国养老院的医疗助理（N = 32）和对照组（N = 50）。我们复制了医疗工作者比对照组自我报告的病原体厌恶感降低的结果。我们还发现它与职业持续时间呈负相关，表明长期习惯化。此外，我们发现医疗助理在基于网络的偏好性注视任务（相当于眼动追踪）上没有表现出行为厌恶回避。令人惊讶的是，这种厌恶回避行为不仅限于养老院中的厌恶刺激，表明了厌恶习惯化的泛化。虽然我们在身体排泄物（核心厌恶）和侵犯身体边界（血腥厌恶）之间没有发现差异，但泛化并没有扩展到其他领域：医疗助理和对照组之间的自我报告的性和道德厌恶敏感性没有差异，与职业持续时间也没有相关性。总之，我们的工作证实了在高频率厌恶环境中工作的人对病原体厌恶的敏感性较低。至关重要的是，我们提供了初步证据表明，这是由于长期习惯化的过程，并且这种习惯化具有病原体厌恶领域内的泛化，但不会超出该领域。
