If an emotion is a feeling or “vibe” that dictates behavior, then disgust is one of our most powerful emotions!
A growing body of research, has revealed the profound power of disgust, showing that this emotion is a much more potent trigger for our behavior and choices than we ever thought. The results play out in all sorts of unexpected areas, such as politics, the judicial system and our spending habits.
The triggers also affect some people far more than others, and often without their knowledge. Disgust, once dubbed “the forgotten emotion of psychiatry”, is being looked at with interest.
Disgust, you may know, is among the so-called ‘basic emotions’ which are recognizable by facial expressions in all races and all societies, even the least advanced. They are the fundamental building blocks of our emotional constitution.
Ekman & Friesen (1982) put forward a list of seven basic emotions commonly judged from still photographs of posed facial behavior, namely:
- surprise
- interest
- anger
- disgust/contempt
- happiness
- sadness
- fear.
They qualified this list by pointing out that it is not supposed to represent all emotions, merely the ones that can be discerned from facial appearances, minus any other expressions. One may question the inclusion of surprise as an emotion. Certainly it is a facial appearance but it can appear at many levels on this scale, including surprise happiness and surprise fear (shock), which are wide apart. Continue reading