engleski

Psychological and physiological correlates of pathogen-induced disgust

The behavioural immune system (BIS) refers to a wide array of affective and cognitive processes that motivate pathogen and disease avoidance. Even though general research in this area is steadily growing, there is only a small number of studies dealing with the physiological aspects of BIS. The goal of this study was to assess the acti-vation of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) during exposition to pathogen-salient stimuli. Participants (N=25) were shown pictures with different levels of pathogen-salience and were asked to rate their (un)pleasantness, while their electrodermal activity and reaction times were being recorded. Participants tended to react faster to the pathogen-salient pictures than to the comparable set of pathogen-free pictures. There was no significant change in magnitudes of skin conductance responses (SCRs) as a function of the type of stimuli. There was, howev-er, a significant effect of pathogen salience on the latency of SCRs, with pathogen-salient pictures having a shorter latency period, which is in line with the notion of fast, automatic responses to pathogen cues. Furthermore, the scores on pathogen disgust subscale of the Three domain disgust scale correlated positively with the magnitude of SCRs and negatively with the reaction times to pathogen-salient stimuli, while having no relation with the same components in pathogen-free context. This indicates domain-specificity, as predicted by the BIS theoretical frame-work. Our findings provide only partial support for the notion that BIS activation is accompanied by significant ANS activation. Additionally, they underscore the importance of adding physiological measures to the subjective ones in order to further explore the mechanisms underlying BIS functioning.

pathogen disgust ; electrodermal activity ; reaction time ; behavioural immune system

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