AI Summary
5 min readYuck! The Science of Disgust
When psychologist David Pizarro was five years old, his older sister and her friend played a game with him. They made him lie down, close his eyes, and open his mouth. He felt something soft, wet, and cold inside. It was partially chewed food that the other girl had spit into her hand and then placed in his mouth. Decades later, Pizarro still remembers the texture and temperature. "I've never felt so betrayed," he says. "I don't remember throwing up, but I can tell you right for sure that I felt like throwing up."
That childhood prank is a vivid entry point into an emotion that, as Pizarro explains to Hidden Brain's Shankar Vedantam, shapes far more than our reactions to spoiled food or bad smells. Disgust, he argues, is a primal force that influences our politics, our moral judgments, who we trust, and who we ostracize.
The Biology of Recoil
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:00) **Introduction: A Childhood Story of Disgust** - Host Shankar Vedantam introduces the episode and psychologist David Pizarro, who recounts a childhood prank involving partially chewed food.
- 2 (04:29) **What is Disgust?** - A definition of disgust as a primal emotion that protects us from contamination, but also shapes behavior and social judgments.
- 3 (05:07) **The 1960 Nixon-Kennedy Debate** - David Pizarro explains how Nixon’s sweaty, pale appearance on live TV may have cost him the election.
- 4 (08:23) **Disgust in Modern Politics: Immigrants and Politicians** - Two recent examples: Trump’s claim about immigrants eating pets and the “Trump baby” balloon in London.
- 5 (11:55) **The Evolutionary Function of Disgust** - Disgust evolved to prevent us from getting sick, but it has expanded into social and political domains.
- 6 (15:04) **Disgust as a Reflex vs. Emotion** - Pizarro explains that disgust is a reflexive, biological response tied to contamination avoidance.
- 7 (19:20) **The Contagion of Disgust** - Disgust spreads through contact and contamination, a principle called "sympathetic magical law of contagion."
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Disgust is a strong emotion, one designed by evolution to protect us from danger and diseases. But disgust also spills into other areas of our lives, influencing our morals, our intuitions about right and wrong, even our politics. We talk with psychologist David Pizarro about how disgust is used to persuade and divide us, and why it remains such a potent force in public life today. Then, in our latest installment of “Your Questions Answered,” Huggy Rao returns to respond to listeners’ thoughts and questions about why big ideas fail.
There's still time to join Shankar at one of our upcoming stops on Hidden Brain's live tour! Join us in Philadelphia on March 21 or New York City on March 25. And stay tuned for more tour dates to be announced soon!
Illustration by Alvaro Montoro for Unsplash
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