ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
Pathogen disgust sensitivity protects against infection in a high pathogen environment.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.
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Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed, 69 citations in OpenAlex.
- Navigating Practical, Political, and Ethical Challenges of Long-Term Human Biology Field Research: The Shuar Health and Life History Project.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2026Article
- The Shuar Health and Life History Project: Overview at 20 Years and Introduction to the Special Issue.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2026Article
- Biosocial Factors Shaping Perceptions of Disease Risk Among a Community-Based Sample of Sexual and Gender Minority People Living in Toronto During the COVID-19 Pandemic.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2025Article
- Soil-Transmitted Helminths and the Intricacies of Immunoregulation: Evidence From Amazonian Ecuador for the Importance of Considering Species-Specific Effects Within the Old Friends Hypothesis.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2025Article
- The Challenge of the Yuck Factor in Public Acceptance of Engineered Living Materials.Global challenges (Hoboken, NJ) · 2025Article
- Circulating Epstein-Barr Virus Antibody Levels as a Biomarker of Socioecological Adversity in Amazonian Ecuador.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2025Article
- The impact of maternal disgust sensitivity from pregnancy until 3 years postpartum on the early development of disgust sensitivity in the child.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Bad Feelings, Best Explanations: In Defence of the Propitiousness Theory of the Low Mood System.Erkenntnis · 2025Article
- Inflammation as a Potential Mechanism Contributing to Sexual Functioning Following Initiation of Gender-Affirming Hormone Therapy.Current sexual health reports · 2024Article
- Article
- How market integration impacts human disease ecology.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2024Article
- Disgust sensitivity and psychopathic behavior: A narrative review.Translational neuroscience · 2024Review
- Italian validation of the body odor disgust scale.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2024Article
- Resting parasympathetic activity is associated with malodor-induced change in perceived foreignness of speakers.Brain and behavior · 2023Article
- I Got it. Perceived Infectability and Germ Aversion after Covid-19 Infection.Clinical neuropsychiatry · 2023Article
- Pandemic elevates sensitivity to moral disgust but not pathogen disgust.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Longitudinal changes in disgust sensitivity during pregnancy and the early postpartum period, and the role of recent health problems.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Disgust sensitivity in early pregnancy as a response to high pathogen risk.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Responses to COVID-19 Threats: an Evolutionary Psychological Analysis.Evolutionary psychological science · 2022Article
- "Bed bugs live in dirty places"-How Using Live Animals in Teaching Contributes to Reducing Stigma, Disgust, Psychological Stigma, and Misinformation in Students.CBE life sciences education · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 7 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Disgust is hypothesized to be an evolved emotion that functions to regulate the avoidance of pathogen-related stimuli and behaviors. Individuals with higher pathogen disgust sensitivity (PDS) are predicted to be exposed to and thus infected by fewer pathogens, though no studies have tested this directly. Furthermore, PDS is hypothesized to be locally calibrated to the types of pathogens normally encountered and the fitness-related costs and benefits of infection and avoidance. Market integration (the degree of production for and consumption from market-based economies) influences the relative costs/benefits of pathogen exposure and avoidance through sanitation, hygiene, and lifestyle changes, and is thus predicted to affect PDS. Here, we examine the function of PDS in disease avoidance, its environmental calibration, and its socioecological variation by examining associations among PDS, market-related lifestyle factors, and measures of bacterial, viral, and macroparasitic infection at the individual, household, and community levels. Data were collected among 75 participants (ages 5 to 59 y) from 28 households in three Ecuadorian Shuar communities characterized by subsistence-based lifestyles and high pathogen burden, but experiencing rapid market integration. As predicted, we found strong negative associations between PDS and biomarkers of immune response to viral/bacterial infection, and weaker associations between PDS and measures of macroparasite infection, apparently mediated by market integration-related differences. We provide support for the previously untested hypothesis that PDS is negatively associated with infection, and document variation in PDS indicative of calibration to local socioeconomic conditions. More broadly, findings highlight the importance of evolved psychological mechanisms in human health outcomes.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.