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Animals as disgust elicitors

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Abstract

This paper attempts to explain how and why nonhuman animals elicit disgust in human beings. I argue that animals elicit disgust in two ways. One is by triggering disease–protection mechanisms, and the other is by eliciting mortality salience, or thoughts of death. I discuss how these two types of disgust operate and defend their conceptual and theoretical coherence against common objections. I also outline an explanatory challenge for disgust researchers. Both types of disgust indicate that a wide variety of animals produce aversive and avoidant reactions in human beings. This seems somewhat odd, given the prominence of animals in human lives. The challenge, then, is explaining how humans cope with the presence of animals. I propose, as a hypothesis for further exploration, that we cope with animals, and our disgust responses to them, by attributing mental states that mark them as inferior beings. To develop my proposal, I draw from recent research on dehumanization and infrahumanization.

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Notes

  1. Davey and Rozin proposed early on that disgust functions as a disease-avoidance mechanism (Davey 1992; Rozin and Fallon 1987).

  2. For a replication with pet-owning participants see Beatson et al. (2009).

  3. A similar response can be applied to Fessler and Navarrete’s (2005) objections against mortality salience and TMT. They found that disgust sensitivity decreases with age, which they argued was contrary to the predictions of TMT, since people become closer to death as they age. It could be argued in reply, however, that gradual aging does not adequately emphasize the salience of death.

  4. The sample consisted of participants from Australia, China, and Italy. 37 mental states total were measured for animals, robots, and supernatural beings.

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    T. J. Kasperbauer

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Kasperbauer, T.J. Animals as disgust elicitors. Biol Philos 30, 167–185 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-015-9478-y

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