“It’s disgusting,” “You’re disgusting”: The determinants and consequences of physical and moral disgust

Disgust is an emotion that is at the heart of our social life. While physical disgust—strongly linked to the body—is well defined and well documented in the literature, disgust occurring in a social context (e.g. when we are confronted with a situation perceived as unfair and/or immoral) is less so. The latter, called moral disgust, considered as the “guardian of the soul,” is to be distinguished from physical disgust, which serves to preserve our health. The first part of this theoretical note addresses the question of how to define the emotion of disgust in the light of recent research, with particular attention to the similarities and differences between physical and moral disgust. In the second and third part we examine the impact of disgust on social and moral judgments and on intergroup relations. In particular, we discuss the consequences of disgust elicited either by the target of the judgment itself (specific social groups) or by stimuli that are unrelated to the target of the judgment. We show how disgust, acting as a “moral intuition,” can facilitate judgments, but can sometimes hamper our social relations and delay the acceptance of social and technological progress.