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The present study examines anxiety and disgust responding during exposure to trauma cues as a function of gender and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Trauma exposed adults without PTSD were compared to adults with PTSD during a script-driven imagery procedure that exposed each participant to individualized traumatic event cues. Anxiety responding during exposure to an individualized traumatic event script was not associated with gender, PTSD, or interaction of gender and PTSD in the present study. However, gender did moderate the relation between disgust responding and PTSD, such that females with PTSD reported more disgust during the script in comparison to females without PTSD and males with and without PTSD. Heart rate during the individualized trauma script was significantly higher among males with PTSD compared to males without PTSD and females with PTSD. Implications of these findings for conceptualizing how gender differences in emotional and physiological responding contribute to development and course of PTSD are discussed.

The current study represents the first examination of covariation biases in contamination fear. Using an undergraduate sample we examined covariation bias for specific emotion outcomes (fear specific and disgust specific) associated with contamination stimuli in high contamination fear (HCF; n=32) and low contamination fear (LCF; n=30) individuals. Following random stimulus-outcome presentation participants provided estimations on the proportion of each presented stimulus-expression pairing. Analyses revealed a specific bias for the over-estimation of fear and disgust contingencies among the HCF group, but not the LCF group. The current study also revealed a specific covariation bias among HCF, not LCF, participants to over-estimate the contingency between contamination stimuli and fear outcomes, not disgust outcomes. Further, results indicate that HCF individuals significantly under-estimate the covariation among contamination stimuli and safety outcomes compared to LCF participants. These findings are discussed in terms of theoretical implications for information processing biases in anxiety disorders.

This study examined the specificity of disgust in predicting avoidance in blood/injury (BI) phobia. Participants high (n=38) and low (n=46) in BI fear completed measures of disgust across multiple domains and severity of BI-related fear. They then completed three randomly presented behavioral avoidance tasks (BATs) that consisted of exposure to a 15'' severed deer leg (BI task), a live spider (spider task), and a 'contaminated' cookie (cookie task). Fainting symptoms associated with each BAT were recorded as well. When controlling for gender and BI fear group membership, mutilation disgust contributed unique variance to avoidance on the BI task and animal disgust contributed unique variance to avoidance on the spider task. None of the disgust domains contributed unique variance to avoidance on the cookie task. For the high BI fear group, self-reported fainting symptoms were more pronounced during the BI and spider BAT than during the cookie BAT. Although mutilation disgust was significantly associated with self-reported fainting symptoms on the BI task among the high BI fear group, this relationship became nonsignificant when controlling for BI-related fear severity. Implications of the domain specificity of disgust and its relevance for understanding fainting responses in BI phobia are discussed.

Research has begun to implicate the role of disgust in the etiology of specific phobias and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, it remains unclear if the association between disgust and specific anxiety disorder symptoms is an artifact of trait anxiety or a potential mechanism through which trait anxiety effects specific anxiety disorder symptoms. The present study employed structural equation modeling to differentiate disgust from trait anxiety in the prediction of four types of specific anxiety disorder symptoms in a non-clinical sample (N=352). Results indicate that disgust and trait anxiety latent factors were independently related to spider fears, blood-injection-injury (BII) fears, general OCD symptoms, and OCD washing concerns. However, when both variables were simultaneously modeled as predictors, latent disgust remained significantly associated with the anxiety disorder symptoms, whereas the association between latent trait anxiety and the anxiety disorder symptoms became non-significant or was substantially reduced. Statistical tests of intervening variable effects converged in support of disgust as a significant intervening variable between trait anxiety and spider fears, BII fears, and OCD symptoms (particularly washing concerns). The relevance of these findings for future research investigating the role of disgust in specific anxiety disorders is discussed.

In the present study, participants (N=22) displaying marked fear of blood-injection-injury (BII) stimuli were provided 30 min of in vivo exposure to threat-relevant stimuli, during which time their fear and disgust levels were repeatedly assessed. Growth curve analyses were then conducted to examine the decay slopes in both fear and disgust and their relationship. Results indicated that exposure led to significant declines in fear and disgust across trials. However, the decay slope observed for fear was significantly greater than that for disgust. Further analyses revealed that the decline in fear across trials remained significant after accounting for the changes in disgust. However, the effect of trial on disgust was no longer significant after controlling for the reduction in fear. Global disgust sensitivity levels prior to exposure did not moderate the level of fear activation or fear reduction during exposure. BII-specific digust sensitivity was also not associated with initial levels of fear. However, levels of BII-specific disgust sensitivity were independently negatively associated with fear decline. Theoretical and clinical implications of the findings are discussed.

The separate and combined roles of fear and disgust in mediating phobic responding in blood-injection-injury (BII) phobia have generated considerable empirical interest. The present study aimed to replicate previous research regarding fear and disgust responding to phobia-relevant and generalized disgust elicitors, as well as to provide a novel examination of performance on behavioral approach/avoidance tasks (BATs) and the "contaminated cookie" procedure (i.e., willingness to eat a cookie after it has come into brief contact with a threat-relevant stimulus). Fear and disgust responses toward pictures (mutilation, insects) and in vivo stimuli (bloody gauze, severed deer leg, cockroach, worm) were assessed in a sample of analogue BII phobics and nonphobics. Consistent with previous research. BII phobics expressed significantly greater fear and disgust toward phobia-relevant pictures and BAT stimuli, with disgust being the dominant emotional response. We failed to find any between-group differences on disgust responding toward the generalized disgust pictures and BAT stimuli. Results from the BATs suggest that BII phobics were less willing to perform all tasks involving blood stimuli, and less willing to complete the latter stages of the insect BATs. BII phobics were less likely to eat the "contaminated cookie" after it had come into contact with only the insect stimuli. Future implications for research examining domain-specific and generalized disgust sensitivity in BII phobia are outlined.

The present study examined the accessibility of harm and safety information regarding threat relevant and threat-irrelevant stimuli in analogue contamination-related obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) participants. High OCD participants (N = 24) and low OCD participants (N = 27) generated lists of reasons why four specific situations (using a public restroom, going cliff diving, reading at the library, going to the museum) might be harmful and why they might be safe. Results revealed that, in comparison to the low OCD participants, high OCD participants were able to generate significantly more items on why using a public restroom might be harmful and significantly fewer items on why using a public restroom might be safe. However, no significant differences were found between the two groups in their ability to generate items regarding harm and safety for other situations. Furthermore, number of safety items predicted contamination group status independent of harm items. Content analysis of the harm items generated for using a public restroom revealed concerns primarily related to contagion and disease. Accordingly, the number of items generated for using a public restroom showed a marginal association with disgust levels. The implications of these findings for understanding cognitive biases underlying contamination-related OCD are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]