disgust in other people. This is surprising because you would expect those with a particular sensitivity to disgust to be alert to other people’s warnings that there’s something disgusting nearby.
An over-sensitivity to disgust might also be implicated in some phobias. When people have irrational fears an element of disgust is sometimes involved. To compare a mild phobic situation with one of more rational fear, while the thought of a large spider makes me shudder with horror, the idea of being stranded, dangling from a rope on a steep mountainside does not make me feel revolted – although it does make my heart beat faster. And intriguingly, it has been found that people with a phobia of blood respond not with a fast heart rate as they would in other situations that scare them, but with the slowed heartbeat you would expect with disgust. Research has found that people who are afraid of spiders do tend to be at the higher end of the disgust sensitivity scale – with those more likely to be horrified at the idea of sharing a bottle of water, for example. In one experiment Peter De Jong from Maastricht University talked people through three scenarios. In the first you had to imagine you were a care assistant whose job it was to go into a room where an elderly man was vomiting, clean him up and change his shirt. As soon as you have finished he is sick again. In a second scenario you had to picture yourself descending some stairs into a cellar to fetch a bottle. Spiders’ webs hang from the ceiling and you duck as a web touches your face. You see a spider lowering itself down on a string and then feel something touch your neck. When you take a bottle out of the crate, you disturb a large spider which runs across your hand. The third situation was more pleasant; you are simply waiting to meet a friend at the station. During this guided imagery the experimenters recorded the extent to which each person moved their levator labii superioris – the sneering muscle which indicates disgust. It was found that the people who were phobic about spiders found the spider scenario the most disgusting. You might have expected them to be afraid, but instead their facial expressions showed disgust. Strikingly, spider phobics also scored higher on a scale measuring general sensitivity to disgust. It seems that spider phobia might actually highlight a fear of contact with something disgusting.
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