This volume brings together the world's leading experts on disgust to fully explore this understudied behavior. Disgust is unique among emotions. It is, at once, perhaps the most basic and visceral of feelings while also being profoundly shaped by learning and culture. Evident from the earliest months of life, disgust influences individual behavior and shapes societies across political, social, economic, legal, ecological, and health contexts.  As an emotion that evolved to prevent our eating contaminated foods, disgust is now known to motivate wider behaviors, social processes, and customs. On a global scale, disgust finds a place in population health initiatives, from hand hygiene to tobacco warning labels, and may underlie aversions to globalization and other progressive agendas, such as those regarding sustainable consumption and gay marriage.

This comprehensive work provides cuttingedge, timely, and succinct theoretical and empirical contributions illustrating thebreadth, rigor, relevance, and increasing maturity of disgust research to modern life.  It is relevant to a wide range of psychological research and is particularly important to behavior viewed through an evolutionary lens,  As such, it will stimulate further research and clinical applications that allow for a broader conceptualization of human behavior.

The reader will find:

Succinct and accessible summaries of key perspectives

Highlights of new scientific developments

A rich blend of theoretical and empirical chapters 

Dr. Philip Powell PhD is a Research Fellow in Health Economics and Decision Science at the School of Health and Related Research at the University of Sheffield, United Kingdom. He is a Chartered Psychologist and Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society and has degrees from the Universities of Sussex and Sheffield. His doctoral thesis was on self-disgust in the context of depression. Current research interests include the role of emotions in health, wellbeing, and consumer behaviour; quality of life research; and methods in health economics. He has published his work widely in leading international journals and previously co-edited The Revolting Self: Perspectives on the Psychological, Social, and Clinical Implications of Self-Directed Disgust (Routledge, 2015). He enjoys playing guitar, hiking, weight lifting, going on adventures with his family, and dislikes coconut. Hes a recent vegetarian.

Prof. Nathan Consedine PhD works in health psychology in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His original training is in the basic understanding of emotion and emotion regulatory processes, evaluating how these factors may be linked to physical and mental health. He has held positions at Long Island University (Brooklyn) and Columbia University and returned to New Zealand in 2009 to begin testing specific ideas about the role of emotions in human behaviour in experimental and clinical designs. Current research interests include experimental studies of disgust, fear, and embarrassment, studies of medical compassion, and the links between emotion regulatory skills and health. He has published more than 150 scientific works and is an Associate Editor and reviewer for numerous international journals. He enjoys fishing, tennis, playing with his children, and listening to the sorts of music that his colleagues dislike. Hes not a vegetarian but thinks he probably should be.

Disgust Research Comes of Age.- Disgust: inductions, methods, and measurement.- The evolution of disgust, parasites and the behavioral immune system.- Disgust and olfaction/perception.- The neuroscience and physiology of disgust.- Developmental changes in disgust.- Morality, disgust and the sociocultural fabric.- Individual differences in disgust.- Disgust and mental health.- Disgust, prejudice and stigma.- Disgust and chronic health conditions.- Disgust and interpersonal relationships/sex.- Disgust, diet, food selection, and nutrition.- Disgust and public health.- Disgust and consumer behavior.- Ruling by disgust: politics and power.- Disgust and the law.- Disgust research into the future.