The emotion disgust motivates costly behavioral strategies that mitigate against potentially larger costs associated with pathogens, sexual behavior, and moral transgressions. Because disgust thereby regulates exposure to harm, it is by definition a mechanism for calibrating decision making under risk. Understanding this illuminates two features of the demographic distribution of this emotion. First, this approach predicts and explains sex differences in disgust. Greater female disgust propensity is often reported and discussed in the literature, but, to date, conclusions have been based on informal comparisons across a small number of studies, while existing functionalist explanations are at best incomplete. We report the results of an extensive meta-analysis documenting this sex difference, arguing that key features of this pattern are best explained as one manifestation of a broad principle of the evolutionary biology of risk-taking: for a given potential benefit, males in an effectively polygynous mating system accept the risk of harm more willingly than do females. Second, viewing disgust as a mechanism for decision making under risk likewise predicts that individual differences in disgust propensity should correlate with individual differences in various forms of risky behavior, because situational and dispositional factors that influence valuation of opportunity and hazard are often correlated across multiple decision contexts. In two large-sample online studies, we find consistent associations between disgust and risk avoidance. We conclude that disgust and related emotions can be usefully examined through the theoretical lens of decision making under risk in light of human evolution. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).
Metaphorical expressions linking love and jealousy to sweet, sour, and bitter tastes are common in normal language use and suggest that these emotions may influence perceptual taste judgments. Hence, we investigated whether the phenomenological experiences of love and jealousy are embodied in the taste sensations of sweetness, sourness, and bitterness. Studies 1A and 1B validated that these metaphors are widely endorsed. In three subsequent studies, participants induced to feel love rated a variety of tastants (sweet-sour candy, bitter-sweet chocolates, and distilled water) as sweeter than those who were induced to feel jealous, neutral, or happy. However, those induced to feel jealous did not differ from those induced to feel happy or neutral on bitter and sour ratings. These findings imply that emotions can influence basic perceptual judgments, but metaphors that refer to the body do not necessarily influence perceptual judgments the way they imply. We further suggest that future research in metaphoric social cognition and metaphor theory may benefit from investigating how such metaphors could have originated.
Terms of endearment such as ''sweetie,'' ''honey,'' and ''sugar'' are commonly used in the context of describing romantic partners. This article explores how a relatively subtle manipulation, namely taste sensations, might influence romantic perceptions of a nonestablished relationship. Consistent with predictions, results from Studies 1 and 2 (n ¼ 280) showed that participants evaluated a hypothetical relationship, but not an existing relationship, more favorably when exposed to sweet taste compared to nonsweet taste control. Study 3 (n ¼ 142) further showed that participants indicated greater interest in initiating a relationship with a potential partner when exposed to sweet taste, as compared to control participants. Implications for the role of sweet taste experiences in attraction and relationship initiation are discussed. Keywords Attraction, metaphors, romantic interest, romantic relationships, sweet tasteMetaphors are used to represent relational bonds symbolically. In English, this is best captured by the oft-heard phrase, ''love is sweet,'' which brings to mind prevalent ideas of love and romance. For example, terms of endearment such as ''sweetie,'' ''honey,'' and ''sugar'' are commonly used with close others and especially in reference to romantic partners (with similarities in other languages, such as Mandarin, German, etc.). J S P RRecent research suggests that these terms may be more than mere metaphors (Chan, Tong, Tan, & Koh, 2013;Meier, Moeller, Riemer-Peltz, & Robinson, 2011). When words indicating sweet taste (e.g., honey or sweetie) are used in a romantic context of describing close others, they become cognitively mapped in such a way that triggering one concept (e.g., sweet taste) may make the other more accessible (e.g., romantic love). This article explores the idea that the experience of a sweet taste and the concept of love can become intertwined. This research specifically examines whether sweet taste experiences affect one's romantic perceptions. We posit that sweet taste experiences may direct romantic perceptions in the form of romantic interest and evaluations of a potential romantic relationship. These romantic perceptions matter because they can orient people toward some romantic partners and/or away from others. Romantic perceptions can be the basis for initiating new relationships, and this is especially important as romantic bonds figure prominently in adult social lives, given that they satisfy important needs and can have important consequences for short-and long-term well-being (Kielcolt-Glaser & Newton, 2001). Hence, we sought to establish whether something as subtle as a sweet taste experience might alter one's perceptual orientation toward a potential romantic relationship. Metaphorical thinking: Sweet taste and loveMetaphors are useful linguistic tools to understand abstract concepts by using the knowledge of more concrete examples (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), such as when emotions are communicated by being paired with terms of physical positions (e.g., ''I feel ...
Odors provide information regarding the chemical properties of potential environment hazards. Some of this information may be disgust-related (e.g., organic decay), whereas other information may be fear-related (e.g., smoke). Many studies have focused on how disgust and fear, as prototypical avoidant emotions, facilitate the detection of possible threats, but these studies have typically confined to the visual modality. Here, we examine how disgust and fear influence olfactory detection at a particular level-the level at which a subliminal olfactory stimulus crosses into conscious perception, also known as a detection threshold. Here, using psychophysical methods that allow us to test perceptual capabilities directly, we show that one way that disgust (Experiments 1-3) and fear (Experiment 3) facilitate detection is by lowering the amount of physical input that is needed to trigger a conscious experience of that input. This effect is particularly strong among individuals with high disgust sensitivity (Experiments 2-3). Our research suggests that a fundamental way in which avoidant emotions foster threat detection is through lowering perceptual thresholds. (PsycINFO Database Record
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.