Know Your Sense of Disgust – A 5 Minute Exercise
Ewwww!! Gross! That’s disgusting!
All of us know what disgust feels like. Darwin called disgust the sixth emotion. He believed that it protected us from danger and was important to our survival as a species. Most, if not all, of our personal hygine beliefs and practices are driven by our sense of disgust. Disgust makes us feel that we need to run away, wash our hands, or even take a shower. Germaphobes are those among us with a heightened sense of disgust There are many things that trigger the feeling of disgust; some we are born with and others are cultural. Some will keep you healthy but many are the result of marketing or even political campaigns. Here is an interesting website that may give you some insight into your own sense of disgust.
According to hygiene guru Val Curtis from The London School of Hygiene believes that “disgust is a problem-solving tool which has evolved over many centuries.” To make the point, Dr. Curtis and the BBC have put together this series of 20 pictures that will give you some insight into your sense of disgust. For each picture you indicate if you would find it disgusting to touch or not. Now I already know what you are thinking but you can relax, there are none of those pictures in this series.
BBC – Science & Nature – Human Body and Mind – Mind – Disgust
After you take the test, which should take about 5 minutes, there is a very interesting analysis of your answers. Find out if your sense of disgust will help you avoid things that might make you sick or if you really are the germaphobe that everyone says that you are.
This entry was posted on Friday, February 23rd, 2007 at 12:06 am and is filed under Clean Living, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
