RESEARCH ARTICLE
The Role of Disgust in Homosexuality Judgments
C. Nega*, L. Pateraki, N. Saranti, A. Pasia
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2016Volume: 9
First Page: 75
Last Page: 83
Publisher ID: TOPSYJ-9-75
DOI: 10.2174/1874350101609010075
Article History:
Received Date: 19/2/2016Revision Received Date: 10/7/2016
Acceptance Date: 12/7/2016
Electronic publication date: 19/08/2016
Collection year: 2016
open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-NC 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode), which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
Background:
There is a continuing debate on whether emotions underlie moral judgments. Recent studies have shown that emotions, and particularly disgust, play an important role in moral judgments.
Objective:
The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of induced disgust on implicit and explicit judgments of homosexuality and to examine the relationship between those judgments and disgust sensitivity.
Method:
Sixty-four college students were presented with a neutral or disgust inducing slideshow and a scenario describing homosexual or heterosexual couples French kissing in public. Implicit and explicit disapproval of public French kissing was measured along with disgust sensitivity.
Results:
The findings revealed that participants in the induced disgust condition showed greater implicit, but not explicit, disapproval of both homosexual and heterosexual public French kissing, compared to those in the neutral conditions. Homosexual public French kissing was implicitly judged more harshly than heterosexual public French kissing. With regard to disgust sensitivity, results revealed its contribution to implicit judgements.
Conclusion:
Present findings add to the existing literature by showing that disgust plays a role in the formation of implicit judgments of sexual behavior. Theoretical considerations accounting for the role of disgust in relation to the intentionality of moral actions are discussed.
