The SWE colloquium on Thursday 22 October (12:00-13:00) will be presented by Michael Siegrist, Professor of Consumer Behavior, ETH Zürich. The talk will be totally virtual, streamed live through Zoom.

The yuck emotion: How disgust influences people’s risk perceptions and behavior

Food intake, sexuality or interactions with other humans do not only have obvious benefits, but these activities are also associated with the risk of getting in contact with pathogens. Disgust is part of the behavioral immune system that reduces the contact with and thus the likelihood of infections from bacteria, parasites and viruses. The mouth is one important entry point for pathogens. Therefore, we developed a food disgust sensitivity scale that has been shown to be reliable and valid. I will present results of various experiments and surveys suggesting that disgust sensitivity is not only related to hygienic behavior, food intake and food waste production, but also how immigrants are perceived. High food disgust sensitive people are more afraid of illnesses brought into the country from immigrants compared with low food disgust sensitive people. We could further demonstrate that people with high food disgust sensitivity have difficulties to ignore disgust evoking cues that are clearly not associated with the risk of pathogens. Disgust is also a factor that influences people’s risk perceptions of food hazards and the acceptance of novel food technologies. Disgust is an important emotion that protects us, but there is also a dark side to this emotion.