Disgust evolved past pathogen defense into death-anxiety management

Evidence

This disinclination to acknowledge that we are animals lies at the heart of one of our most powerful emotions: disgust. Disgust likely evolved to steer our ancestors away from spoiled meat and other organic materials that carried deadly pathogens that could literally kill them. But as the awareness of death emerged, disgust extended to a broader range of reminders of our animality, such as guts, bones, blood, and bodily emissions. Indeed, people find urine, mucus, feces, vomit, and blood more disgusting after thinking about death, and vice versa: thinking about bodily products like feces brings death thoughts more readily to mind. And after thinking about death, people tend to refer to bodily processes more euphemistically, for example, “number two” instead of “defecation.” — Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenberg, Tom Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 560

Categorization

• XREF: Extends Rozin’s and Tybur’s accounts of disgust; the death-thought link adds a terror-management layer to standard pathogen-avoidance theory.