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Fitouchi et al. persuasively argue against popular disgust-based accounts of puritanical morality. However, they do not consider alternative account of moral condemnation that is also based on the psychology of disgust. We argue that these other disgust-based accounts are more promising than those dismissed in the target article.

Third party punishment (TPP) is thought to be crucial to the evolution and maintenance of human cooperation. However, this type of punishment is often not rewarded, perhaps because punishers' underlying motives are unclear. We propose that the expression of moral emotions could solve this problem by advertising such motives. In each of three experiments ( n = 1711), a third-party punishment game was followed by a trust game. Third parties expressed anger or disgust instead of, or in addition to, financial punishment. Results showed that third parties who expressed these emotions were trusted more than those who didn't express (Experiment 1), and more than those who financially punished (Experiment 2). Moreover, third parties who expressed while financially punishing were trusted more than those who punished without expressing (Experiment 3). Findings suggest that emotion expression might play a role in the evolution and maintenance of cooperation by facilitating TPP.

Why is disgust sensitivity associated with socially conservative political views? Is it because socially conservative ideologies mitigate the risks of infectious disease, whether by promoting out-group avoidance or by reinforcing norms that sustain antipathogenic practices? Or might it be because socially conservative ideologies promote moral standards that advance a long-term, as opposed to a short-term, sexual strategy? Recent attempts to test these two explanations have yielded differing results and conflicting interpretations. Here, we contribute to the literature by examining the relationship between disgust sensitivity and political orientation, political party affiliation, and an often overlooked outcome-actual voter behavior. We focus on voter behavior and affiliation for the 2016 U.S. presidential election to determine whether pathogen or sexual disgust better predicts socially conservative ideology. Although many prominent aspects of Donald Trump's campaign-particularly his anti-foreign message-align with the pathogen-avoidance model of conservatism, we found that pathogen-related disgust sensitivity exerted no influence on political ideology, political party affiliation, or voter behavior, after controlling for sexual disgust sensitivity. In contrast, sexual disgust sensitivity was associated with increased odds of voting for Donald Trump versus each other major presidential candidate, as well as with increased odds of affiliating with the Republican versus the Democratic or Libertarian parties. In fact, for every unit increase in sexual disgust sensitivity, the odds of a participant voting for Trump versus Clinton increased by approximately 30%. It seems, then, that sexual disgust trumps pathogen disgust in predicting socially conservative voting behavior.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 16(1) of Emotion (see record 2015-57029-001). In the article, the name of author Joshua M. Tybur was misspelled as Joshua M. Tyber. All versions of this article have been corrected.] Response sensitivity to common disgust elicitors varies considerably among individuals. The sources of these individual differences are largely unknown. In the current study, we use a large sample of female identical and nonidentical twins (N = 1,041 individuals) and their siblings (N = 170) to estimate the proportion of variation due to genetic effects, the shared environment, and other (residual) sources across multiple domains of disgust sensitivity. We also investigate the genetic and environmental influences on the covariation between the different disgust domains. Twin modeling revealed that approximately half of the variation in pathogen, sexual, and moral disgust is due to genetic effects. An independent pathways twin model also revealed that sexual and pathogen disgust sensitivity were influenced by unique sources of genetic variation, while also being significantly affected by a general genetic factor underlying all 3 disgust domains. Moral disgust sensitivity, in contrast, did not exhibit domain-specific genetic variation. These findings are discussed in light of contemporary evolutionary approaches to disgust sensitivity., ((c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).)

Interest in and research on disgust has surged over the past few decades. The field, however, still lacks a coherent theoretical framework for understanding the evolved function or functions of disgust. Here we present such a framework, emphasizing 2 levels of analysis: that of evolved function and that of information processing. Although there is widespread agreement that disgust evolved to motivate the avoidance of contact with disease-causing organisms, there is no consensus about the functions disgust serves when evoked by acts unrelated to pathogen avoidance. Here we suggest that in addition to motivating pathogen avoidance, disgust evolved to regulate decisions in the domains of mate choice and morality. For each proposed evolved function, we posit distinct information processing systems that integrate function-relevant information and account for the trade-offs required of each disgust system. By refocusing the discussion of disgust on computational mechanisms, we recast prior theorizing on disgust into a framework that can generate new lines of empirical and theoretical inquiry.

Previous research suggests that several individual and cultural level attitudes, cognitions, and societal structures may have evolved to mitigate the pathogen threats posed by intergroup interactions. It has been suggested that these anti-pathogen defenses are at the root of conservative political ideology. Here, we test a hypothesis that political conservatism functions as a pathogen-avoidance strategy. Across three studies, we consistently find no relationship between sensitivity to pathogen disgust and multiple measures of political conservatism. These results are contrasted with theoretical perspectives suggesting a relationship between conservatism and pathogen avoidance, and with previous findings of a relationship between conservatism and disgust sensitivity.

What is the function of disgust? Whereas traditional models have suggested that disgust serves to protect the self or neutralize reminders of our animal nature, an evolutionary perspective suggests that disgust functions to solve 3 qualitatively different adaptive problems related to pathogen avoidance, mate choice, and social interaction. The authors investigated this 3-domain model of disgust across 4 studies and examined how sensitivity to these functional domains relates to individual differences in other psychological constructs. Consistent with their predictions, factor analyses demonstrated that disgust sensitivity partitions into domains related to pathogens, sexuality, and morality. Further, sensitivity to the 3 domains showed predictable differentiation based on sex, perceived vulnerability to disease, psychopathic tendencies, and Big 5 personality traits. In exploring these 3 domains of disgust, the authors introduce a new measure of disgust sensitivity. Appreciation of the functional heterogeneity of disgust has important implications for research on individual differences in disgust sensitivity, emotion, clinical impairments, and neuroscience., ((PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved).)