Parents Develop Long‐Term Disgust Habituation, but Only After Beginning to Wean Their Children.
Disgust helps humans avoid potentially pathogenic substances such as bodily effluvia. This reduces illness risks and is difficult to overcome with cognitive strategies or through short‐term habituation (minutes to hours). Whether long‐term habituation (months to years) exists is an unsolved question...
| Publicado en: | Scandinavian Journal of Psychology Vol. 67; no. 3; pp. 787 - 801 |
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| Autores principales: | , , , , |
| Formato: | clinical trial pictorial research tables/charts Journal Article |
| Publicado: |
Wiley-Blackwell
Jun2026
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=193655705&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ccm uiTerm: 193655705 longDbName: CINAHL Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: dissinfo: jinfo: jid: 00365564 2CT jtl: Scandinavian Journal of Psychology issn: 00365564 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Jun2026 vid: 67 iid: 3 pid: 480 pub: Wiley-Blackwell place: Malden, Massachusetts artinfo: ui: 193655705 190687121 193655705 193655705 10.1111/sjop.70069 193655705 ppf: 787 ppct: 14 formats: tig: atl: Parents Develop Long‐Term Disgust Habituation, but Only After Beginning to Wean Their Children. aug: au: Huang, Yifan Dalmaijer‐Denning, Ivo E. Dalmaijer‐Denning, Joris A. Armstrong, Thomas Dalmaijer, Edwin S. affil: School of Psychological Science, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK sug: subj: Parents Psychosocial Factors Disgust Infant Weaning Desensitization, Psychologic Evaluation Avoidance (Psychology) Evaluation Fluids and Secretions Human Quasi-Experimental Studies Clinical Trials Feces Diapers Male Female Descriptive Statistics Adult Middle Age Aged Adolescence Questionnaires Behavior Evaluation Task Performance and Analysis Physical Stimulation Classification Models, Statistical T-Tests Bivariate Statistics Test-Retest Reliability Data Analysis Software Exploratory Research Age Factors Adult: 19-44 years Middle Aged: 45-64 years Aged: 65+ years Adolescent: 13-18 years Male Female ab: Disgust helps humans avoid potentially pathogenic substances such as bodily effluvia. This reduces illness risks and is difficult to overcome with cognitive strategies or through short‐term habituation (minutes to hours). Whether long‐term habituation (months to years) exists is an unsolved question. While regular professional exposure to disgust elicitors is associated with lower disgust sensitivity and avoidance, this could reflect selection and survivorship bias. We use the natural quasi‐experiment of parenthood: it greatly increases exposure to bodily effluvia, but disgust does not usually inspire individuals to start or stop being a parent. Parents (N = 99) and controls (N = 50) completed self‐report and behavioral avoidance measures. We used parent‐specific items in disgust‐sensitivity questionnaires, and child‐related stimuli (soiled diapers) in a preferential‐looking task. These included diapers with pre‐weaning (yellow and runny) or post‐weaning feces (adult‐like). While the control group showed the expected behavioral avoidance, parents of weaning or weaned children showed almost no avoidance of stimuli depicting child‐related or general bodily effluvia. These results suggest that parents habituated to disgust induced by feces in diapers, and that this had generalized to other bodily effluvia. Contrary to our expectations, parents of pre‐weaning children showed similar disgust avoidance to the control group, even if they had older children. This could point to an adaptive response to reduce the risk of illness in young infants. After the sensitive milk‐feeding stage, continuous exposure to their children's bodily effluvia inoculates parents to disgust. Key Points: Parents to young children face daily exposure to bodily effluvia.Presumably as a consequence, parents showed markedly reduced disgust avoidance.This disgust habituation only emerged after their children started weaning.Parental disgust habituation generalised to bodily effluvia that were not associated with children. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: clinical trial pictorial research tables/charts Journal Article ougenre: Article language: English refInfo: holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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