Abstract:
Delay and avoidance of health care are common problems affected by many different factors, including emotions. Fear and embarrassment have been examined as predictors of delay and avoidance, but disgust, an emotion that specifically evolved to promote health-enhancing avoidance, remains understudied. Despite generally being health-enhancing, disgust may also produce avoidance behaviours that are maladaptive in current health contexts. The present study thus investigated the relationships between disgust sensitivity and health related behaviours and examined various operationalizations of disgust to determine which specific domains were associated with health-promoting and health-deleterious avoidance. A convenience sample of 318 volunteers was recruited from the University of Auckland. Participants were required to complete an online questionnaire including measures of disgust sensitivity and propensity, social desirability, neuroticism, hygiene behaviour, safe sex behaviour, food-related behaviour, past health behaviour and medical decision making scenarios. Forward stepwise regression analyses were conducted to determine the predictive value of different domains of disgust sensitivity for different health related behaviours. As expected disgust sensitivity was associated with both health-promoting avoidance and health-deleterious avoidance behaviours. Three domains of disgust sensitivity (core, animalreminder and contamination) predicted different health related behaviours, greater core disgust was found to predict fewer risky sexual behaviours but also less frequent condom use, while contamination disgust predicted being more likely to seek care for symptoms and was also associated with greater general and hand hygiene behaviours. Animal-reminder disgust only predicted delays in seeking health care for sexual health related symptoms among males. In some instances different disgust domains were also found to simultaneously predict behaviour, with both core and contamination disgust predicting greater food-related avoidance behaviour and all three domains were associated with medical avoidance. Results are discussed in the context of evolutionary theories of disgust and behaviours which are beneficial and detrimental to health. Disgust sensitivity is a promising predictor of health behaviour as it predicts avoidance behaviours that are not only beneficial to health but can also deter individuals from utilising health care. Developing interventions or health promotion strategies which lessen the elicitation of disgust may help decrease delay and avoidance of health care utilisation.