Motivation and emotion/Book/2024/Disgust and hygiene
How does disgust influence hygiene behaviours and what are the psychological mechanisms involved?
Overview
[edit | edit source]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/eb/Washing_Hands.jpg/220px-Washing_Hands.jpg)
Scenario
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- Disgust Causes Immediate Actions: In order to prevent contamination, disgust causes quick actions to be taken, such as handwashing. (e.g., see Figure 1)[1]
- Influence: Disgust has an influence on daily hygiene decisions, which are essential for illness prevention.
- Underlying Psychological Mechanisms: Understanding how behaviour is motivated by disgust provides an explanation for the differences in hygiene practices.
Focus questions:
*What are the psychological mechanisms linking disgust to hygiene behaviours? *How do individual differences in disgust sensitivity impact hygiene practices?
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Understanding disgust
[edit | edit source]Disgust developed as a defence mechanism to keep people safe from toxins and illness. Beyond just physical responses, social and moral disgust also affects our interactions and behaviour. It functions as a defence against illness. People differ in how sensitive they are to disgust, and this influences how they choose to avoid perceived contaminants and how they maintain their daily hygiene. [2]
Origin of disgust
[edit | edit source]- Talk about how disgust evolved to shield people from dangerous substances and possible infections.
Disgust as defence mechanisms against disease
[edit | edit source]- Describe how avoidance practices, which lower the risk of contamination and illness, are prompted by disgust.
Disgust and hygiene behaviours
[edit | edit source]Disgust is an adaptive mechanism used to stave off illness. It motivates hygienic practices like hand washing, which are essential for averting disease.Disgust can be divided into three domains: moral, sexual, and pathogen. Pathogen disgust is strongly associated with preventive measures taken to prevent illness.[3]
How disgust drives hygiene practices
[edit | edit source]- Examine how disgust motivates acts such as cleaning and handwashing in order to prevent infection.
The role of disgust in everyday hygiene choices
[edit | edit source]- Talk about how disgust affects the choices we make on a daily basis, like cleaning frequently or avoiding unclean places.
Psychological mechanisms of disgust
[edit | edit source]Key to disease avoidance is disgust, which can trigger preventative hygiene behaviours as well as maladaptive reactions like obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in certain situations.[4]
Disgust sensitivity: individual differences
[edit | edit source]- Give a brief explanation of how different people's experiences with disgust influence their hygiene practices.
Cognitive and Behavioural Links Between Disgust and Hygiene
[edit | edit source]- Describe how learnt connections and avoidance cause particular hygienic habits to arise from the feeling of disgust.
Public health implications
[edit | edit source]Behaviours related to hygiene could have evolved through evolution or heredity. Disgust can be effectively used by public health campaigns to promote improved cleanliness habits, for example, by using images that draw attention to the spread of germs.[5]
Leveraging Disgust in Public Health Campaigns
[edit | edit source]- Talk about how highlighting contamination concerns in campaigns might help people adopt hygienic practices like handwashing.
The Balance Between Healthy and Excessive Disgust
[edit | edit source]- Talk about how healthy hygiene can be promoted without going too far in terms of disgust, by striking a balance between healthy and excessive contempt.
Headings
[edit | edit source]- Aim for three to six main headings in between the Overview and Conclusion
- Sub-headings can also be used, but
- avoid having sections with only one sub-heading
- provide an introductory paragraph before breaking into sub-sections
Key points
[edit | edit source]- Key Points:
- Disgust evolved as a protective mechanism to avoid pathogens.[6]
- The emotional response of disgust is deeply linked to hygiene behaviours.
- Individual differences in disgust sensitivity lead to varied hygiene practices.
Figures
[edit | edit source]![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/Thought_bubble.svg/140px-Thought_bubble.svg.png)
- Use figures to illustrate concepts, add interest, and to serve as examples
- Figures can show photos, diagrams, graphs, video, audio, etcetera
- Embed figures throughout the chapter, including the Overview section
- Figures should be captioned (using Figure #. and a caption). Use captions to explain the relevance of the image to the text/
- Wikimedia Commons provides a library of embeddable images
- Images can also be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons if they are openly licensed
- Refer to each figure at least once in the main text (e.g., see Figure 2)
Learning features
[edit | edit source]Interactive learning features help to bring online book chapters to life and can be embedded throughout the chapter.
- Scenarios
- Scenarios or case studies describe applied/real-world examples of concepts in action
- Case studies can be real or fictional
- A case study could be split into multiple boxes throughout a chapter (e.g., to illustrate different theories or stages)
- It is often helpful to present case studies using feature boxes.
- Feature boxes
- Important content can be highlighted in a feature box. But don't overuse feature boxes, otherwise they lose their effect.
- Consider using feature boxes for:
- Scenarios, case studies, or examples
- Focus questions
- Tips
- Quiz questions
- Take-home messages
- Links
- When key words are introduced, use interwiki links to:
- Wikipedia (e.g., Sigmund Freud wrote about (e.g., dreams) or
- Related book chapters (e.g., writer's block)
- Tables
- Use to organise and summarise information
- As with figures, tables should be captioned
- Refer to each table at least once in the main text (e.g., see Table 1)
- Example 3 x 3 tables which could be adapted
Table 1. Descriptive Caption Which Explains The Table and its Relevant to the Text - Johari Window Model
Known to self | Not known to self | |
---|---|---|
Known to others | Open area | Blind spot |
Not known to others | Hidden area | Unknown |
- Quizzes
- Using one or two review questions per major section is usually better than a long quiz at the end
- Quiz conceptual understanding, rather than trivia
- Don't make quizzes too hard
- Different types of quiz questions are possible; see Quiz
Example simple quiz questions. Choose your answers and click "Submit":
Conclusion
[edit | edit source]- The Conclusion is arguably the most important section
- Suggested word count: 150 to 330 words
- It should be possible for someone to only read the Overview and the Conclusion and still get a pretty good idea of the problem and what is known based on psychological science
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See also
[edit | edit source]Disgust (Wikipedia)
Hygiene (Wikipedia)
Obsessive-compulsive disorder (Wikipedia)
Provide internal (wiki) links to the most relevant Wikiversity pages (esp. related motivation and emotion book chapters) and Wikipedia articles. Use these formats:
- Light triad (Book chapter, 2021)
- Collaborative authoring using wiki (Wikiversity)
- Self determination theory (Wikipedia)
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References
[edit | edit source]- Curtis, V., & Biran, A. (2001). Dirt, Disgust, and Disease: Is Hygiene in Our Genes? Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 44(1), 17–31. https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.2001.0001
- Curtis, V., de Barra, M., & Aunger, R. (2011). Disgust as an adaptive system for disease avoidance behaviour. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological Sciences, 366(1568), 1320–1320. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2011.0002
- Davey, G. C. L. (2011). Disgust: the disease-avoidance emotion and its dysfunctions. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological Sciences, 366(1583), 3453–3465. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2011.0039
- Oaten, M., Stevenson, R. J., & Case, T. I. (2009). Disgust as a Disease-Avoidance Mechanism. Psychological Bulletin, 135(2), 303–321. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014823
- Rozin, P., Haidt, J., & McCauley, C. R. (1999). Disgust: The body and soul emotion. Handbook of cognition and emotion, 429, 445.
- Tybur, J. M., Lieberman, D., Kurzban, R., & DeScioli, P. (2013). Disgust: Evolved Function and Structure. Psychological Review, 120(1), 65–84. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0030778
External links
[edit | edit source]Provide external links to highly relevant resources such as presentations, news articles, and professional sites. Use sentence casing. For example:
- Six top tips for writing a great essay (University of Melbourne)
- The importance of structure (skillsyouneed.com)
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- ↑ "File:Washing Hands.jpg - Wikiversity". commons.wikimedia.org. 2024-08-15. Retrieved 2024-08-15.
- ↑ Oaten, Megan; Stevenson, Richard J.; Case, Trevor I. (2009). "Disgust as a disease-avoidance mechanism.". Psychological Bulletin 135 (2): 303–321. doi:10.1037/a0014823. ISSN 1939-1455. http://doi.apa.org/getdoi.cfm?doi=10.1037/a0014823.
- ↑ Curtis, Valerie; de Barra, Mícheál; Aunger, Robert (2011-04-27). "Disgust as an adaptive system for disease avoidance behaviour". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 366 (1568): 1320–1320. doi:10.1098/rstb.2011.0002. ISSN 0962-8436. PMC PMC3061113. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2011.0002.
- ↑ Davey, Graham C. L. (2011-12-12). "Disgust: the disease-avoidance emotion and its dysfunctions". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 366 (1583): 3453–3465. doi:10.1098/rstb.2011.0039. ISSN 0962-8436. PMID 22042921. PMC PMC3189352. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2011.0039.
- ↑ Curtis, Valerie; Biran, Adam (2001). "Dirt, Disgust, and Disease: Is Hygiene in Our Genes?". Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 44 (1): 17–31. doi:10.1353/pbm.2001.0001. ISSN 1529-8795. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/26017.
- ↑ Oaten, Megan; Stevenson, Richard J.; Case, Trevor I. (2009). "Disgust as a disease-avoidance mechanism.". Psychological Bulletin 135 (2): 303–321. doi:10.1037/a0014823. ISSN 1939-1455. http://doi.apa.org/getdoi.cfm?doi=10.1037/a0014823.