Disgust and fear interactions in rituals
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| Year of publication | 2012 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The presented project is focused on emotional background of religious practices and rituals, which involve objects and situations, which are in other occasions considered as disgusting (dead bodies, blood, body products, body envelope violations etc.). The normal behavioral response typical for disgust is aversion and avoidance, but, opposite to this, some rituals involve touching, kissing, eating or other forms of contact with these kinds of objects. Recent psychological studies show a strong relationship between disgust, fear and anger. The interest of this project is narrowed specially to the disgust/fear interactions. Disgust elicitors can be and often are perceived as threats and so are highly relevant to fear triggering. The possible evolutionary logic, which could explain the joint triggering of disgust and fear, is that in situation when the aversive behavioral response typical for disgust is not sufficient to avoid the contact, the more dramatic behavioral response to fear (flight or fight) can be more effective. The assumption is that fear is triggered together with disgust in situations when people cannot avoid the contact, or cannot guarantee the non-contact with disgusting objects. This idea can be followed in two directions by formulating two hypothesizes: (1) when a disgusting object activates also agency detection, fear will be triggered. (2) Fear is triggered by a disgusting object in situation when the person is forced (e.g. socially) to come in physical contact with the object. |
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