Disgust and its function: Based on works by Paul Rozin and his colleagues

Abstract

As a basic emotion, disgust is thought to have evolved as a biological function to protect human bodies from potentially dangerous foods. Along with the growth, elicitors of disgust have expanded to multiple domains: animals, body products, sex, death corpses, bad hygiene, body envelope violations and moral offenses. Rozin and his colleagues proposed that functions of disgust is to protect the body, soul and social order. They also proposed the CAD triad hypothesis (Rozin, Lowery, Imada, & Haidt, 1999) which stipulates that people feel anger for violations of autonomy, contempt for violations of community, and disgust for violations of divinity. In this paper, a hypothetical assumption that disgust, as a moral emotion, may be an underlying motive to produce hostility, expulsions and hate crimes toward outgroups was discussed.