The emotion of disgust is suggested to be an adaptation that evolved to keep us away from sources of infection. Therefore, individuals from populations with greater pathogen stress should have a greater disgust sensitivity. However, current evidence for a positive relationship between disgust sensitivity and the intensity of infectious diseases in the environment is limited. We tested whether disgust and contamination sensitivity changed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Disgust was assessed in (...) 984 women in 2017 and 633 women in 2020 by a set of photographs depicting sources of infection and Pathogen and Moral of Three-Domain Disgust Scale. Further, contamination sensitivity among participants in two waves was measured by Contamination Obsessions and Washing Compulsions Subscale of Padua Inventory. State anxiety was measured with the Polish adaptation of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory only during the second wave of data collection. Women from the COVID-19 pandemic group assessed the photographs depicting sources of infection as more disgusting, scoring higher on Padua Inventory, but lower on Moral Disgust Domain as compared to women from before the pandemic. In addition, anxiety levels during pandemic positively correlated with scores from Pathogen Disgust Domain, Padua Inventory, and the ratings of the photographs. The participants of the study scored higher in state anxiety than the norms determined for the Polish population. Summarizing, we present evidence for differences in individual levels of disgust sensitivity in relation to pathogen stress, supporting the idea that disgust evolved to serve as protection from pathogens. (shrink)

Two studies demonstrate that a dispositional proneness to disgust (“disgust sensitivity”) is associated with intuitive disapproval of gay people. Study 1 was based on previous research showing that people are more likely to describe a behavior as intentional when they see it as morally wrong (see Knobe, 2006, for a review). As predicted, the more disgust sensitive participants were, the more likely they were to describe an agent whose behavior had the side effect of causing gay (...) men to kiss in public as having intentionally encouraged gay men to kiss publicly— even though most participants did not explicitly think it wrong to encourage gay men to kiss in public. No such effect occurred when subjects were asked about heterosexual kissing. Study 2 used the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Nosek, Banaji, & Greenwald, 2006) as a dependent measure. The more disgust sensitive participants were, the more they showed.. (shrink)

Much research has explored behaviours that are linked with disgust sensitivity. Few studies, however, have been devoted to understanding how fixed or variable disgust sensitivity is. We therefore aimed to examine whether disgust sensitivity can change with the environment by repeatedly testing students whose environment was not changing as well as student cadets undergoing intensive training at an army camp. We found that an increase in the perceived harshness of the environment was associated with (...) a decrease in pathogen disgust sensitivity. Our results support the idea that disgust sensitivity is malleable depending on the environment. More specifically, we propose that in a harsh environment, where survival may be more difficult, pathogen disgust sensitivity may decrease to allow the consumption of available resources. (shrink)

There have been few tests of whether exposure to naturalistic or experimental disease-threat inductions alter disgust sensitivity, although it has been hypothesized that this should occur as part of disgust’s disease avoidance function. In the current study, we asked Macquarie university students to complete measures of disgust sensitivity, perceived vulnerability to disease, hand hygiene behavior and impulsivity, during Australia’s Covid-19 pandemic self-quarantine period, in March/April 2020. These data were then compared to earlier Macquarie university, and (...) other local, and overseas student cohorts, to determine if disgust sensitivity and the other measures, were different in the lockdown sample. The most consistent finding in the lockdown sample was of higher core disgust sensitivity, with some evidence of greater germ aversion on the PVD, and an increase in hand and food-related hygiene, but with little change in impulsivity. The consistency with which greater core disgust sensitivity was observed, suggests exposure to a highly naturalistic disease threat is a plausible cause. Greater disgust sensitivity may have several functional benefits and may arise implicitly from the threat posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. (shrink)

Disgust seems to play an important role in moral judgment. However, it is unclear whether the role of disgust in moral judgment is limited to certain kinds of moral domains (versus many) and/or certain types of disgust (versus many). To clarify these questions, we conducted a multilevel meta-analysis (k = 512; N = 72,443) on relations between trait disgust sensitivity and moral judgment (disgust-immorality association). Main analyses revealed a significant overall mean disgust-immorality association (...) (r =.23). Additionally, moderator analyses revealed significant specificity in disgust type and moral domain (grounded in Moral Foundations Theory): effects were stronger for (a) sexual disgust compared to pathogen disgust, (b) sanctity moral judgments compared to other domains of moral judgments, and (c) sexual-sanctity associations compared to other disgust type-moral domain pairings. (shrink)

Several personality dispositions with common features capturing sensitivities to negative social cues have recently been introduced into psychological research. To date, however, little is known about their interrelations, their conjoint effects on behavior, or their interplay with other risk factors. We asked N = 349 adults from Germany to rate their justice, rejection, moral disgust, and provocation sensitivity, hostile attribution bias, trait anger, and forms and functions of aggression. The sensitivity measures were mostly positively correlated; particularly those (...) with an egoistic focus, such as victim justice, rejection, and provocation sensitivity, hostile attributions and trait anger as well as those with an altruistic focus, such as observer justice, perpetrator justice, and moral disgust sensitivity. The sensitivity measures had independent and differential effects on forms and functions of aggression when considered simultaneously and when controlling for hostile attributions and anger. They could not be integrated into a single factor of interpersonal sensitivity or reduced to other well-known risk factors for aggression. The sensitivity measures, therefore, require consideration in predicting and preventing aggression. (shrink)

Individuals with trypophobia have an aversion towards clusters of roughly circular shapes, such as those on a sponge or the bubbles on a cup of coffee. It is unclear why the condition exists, given the harmless nature of typical eliciting stimuli. We suggest that aversion to clusters is an evolutionarily prepared response towards a class of stimuli that resemble cues to the presence of parasites and infectious disease. Trypophobia may be an exaggerated and overgeneralised version of this normally adaptive response. (...) Consistent with this explanation, individuals with trypophobia, as well as comparison individuals, reported aversion towards disease-relevant cluster stimuli, but only the trypophobic group reported aversion towards objectively harmless cluster stimuli that had no relevance to disease. For both groups the level of aversion reported was predicted uniquely by a measure of disgust sensitivity. Scaled emotion ratings and open-ended responses revealed that the aversive response was predominantly based on the disease avoidance emotion, disgust. Many open-ended responses also described skin sensations. These findings support the proposal that individuals with trypophobia primarily perceive cluster stimuli as cues to ectoparasites and skin-transmitted pathogens. (shrink)

We examined disgust and fear responses to spiders in spider-distressed and nondistressed individuals. Undergraduate participants (N = 134) completed questionnaires concerning responses to spiders and other potentially aversive stimuli, as well as measures of disgust sensitivity, anxious arousal, worry, and anhedonic depression. In addition, we obtained self-report and facial expressions of disgust and fear while participants were exposed to a live tarantula. Both spider distressed and nondistressed individuals reported disgust and exhibited disgust facial expressions (...) in response to a tarantula. Disgust in response to spiders was not found to be part of a general disgust response to all negative stimuli, nor was it due to a general negative emotional response to spiders. Emotional responses to spiders were differentially associated with scores on personality and psychological functioning measures. The results of this study provide evidence that spiders have a specific disgust-evoking status in both distressed and nondistressed populations. (shrink)

The uniquely human emotion of disgust is intimately connected to morality in many, perhaps all, cultures. We report two studies suggesting that a predisposition to feel disgust is associated with more conservative political attitudes, especially for issues related to the moral dimension of purity. In the first study, we document a positive correlation between disgust sensitivity and self-reported conservatism in a broad sample of US adults. In Study 2 we show that while disgust sensitivity (...) is associated with more conservative attitudes on a range of political issues, this relationship is strongest for purity-related issues—specifically, abortion and gay marriage. (shrink)

Emergency situations require individuals to make important changes in their behavior. In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, official recommendations to avoid the spread of the virus include costly behaviors such as self-quarantining or drastically diminishing social contacts. Compliance (or lack thereof) with these recommendations is a controversial and divisive topic, and lay hypotheses abound regarding what underlies this divide. This paper investigates which cognitive, moral, and emotional traits separate people who comply with official recommendations from those who don't. In (...) four studies (three pre-registered) on both U.S. and French samples, we found that individuals' self-reported compliance with official recommendations during the COVID-19 pandemic was partly driven by individual differences in moral values, disgust sensitivity, and psychological reactance. We discuss the limitations of our studies and suggest possible applications in the context of health communication. (shrink)

Disgust is reasoned to operate in conjunction with the immune system to help protect the body from illness. However, less is known about the factors that impact the degree to which individuals invest in pathogen avoidance (disgust) versus pathogen management (prophylactic immunological activity). Here, we examine the role that one’s control over pathogen contact plays in resolving such investment trade-offs, predicting that (a) those from low control environments will invest less in pathogen-avoidance strategies and (b) investment in each (...) of these two strategies will occur in a compensatory fashion (i.e. they will be traded off with one other). Across four studies, we found support for these predictions, using a variety of manipulations and measures. By providing novel insights into how one’s control over pathogen exposure influences disgust sensitivity and immune system activity, the current research poses an important contribution to the literature on disgust, pathogen avoidance, and the immune system. (shrink)

In the present article, I review some evidence that shows how body odor disgust sensitivity plays a central role in the so-called behavioral immune system, a set of processes aimed at detecting, emotionally reacting, and behaviorally avoiding pathogen threats. I also report empirical evidence on how the BODS relates to social attitudes such as authoritarianism, xenophobia, and condemnation of “impure” moral violations. This research is interpreted from an Evolutionary psychology framework.

Contempt and disgust share a number of features which distinguish them from other hostile emotions: they both present two distinct facets—a nonmoral facet and a moral one; they both imply a negative evaluation of the dispositional kind as well as disrespect towards the target of the feeling; and they trigger avoidance and exclusion action tendencies. However, while sharing a common core, contempt and disgust are in our view distinct emotions, qualified by different cognitive-motivational features. Contempt is felt exclusively (...) towards human targets, and implies sense of superiority over them, pessimistic feelings about their possibility of betterment, detachment from them, and avoidance driven by detachment; whereas disgust can be directed at a wide range of possible targets, and implies contamination sensitivity, fear of contamination, and fear-driven avoidance. The differences between contempt and disgust are related to the different kinds of standard against which the target is evaluated, and the different kinds of disrespect engendered by the negative evaluation. (shrink)

Blending phenomenological and evolutionary approaches, three studies explored the relationship between the body, the self, and disgust. Study 1 demonstrated that body parts that interface with the environment are sensed more than internal body parts, and are more intimately associated with the self. Studies 2 and 3, exploring the bodily distribution of disgust via organ transplantation scenarios, revealed that (a) transplantation of interface body parts is more disgusting than transplantation of internal parts; (b) others' interface parts elicit greater (...) disgust than others' internal parts; and (c) individual differences in disgust sensitivity manifest primarily in reasoning about interface parts. The outer/inner dichotomy is a fundamental feature of the relationship between body and self, reflecting the adaptive utility of concentrating attention on the interface with the environment. Correspondingly, disgust, the emotion that protects the organism from contamination, is focused on the intersection between the body and the environment. (shrink)

It can be creepy to notice that something human-looking is not real. But can sensitivity to this phenomenon, known as the uncanny valley, be predicted from superficially unrelated traits? Based on results from at least 489 participants, this study examines the relation between nine theoretically motivated trait indices and uncanny valley sensitivity, operationalized as increased eerie ratings and decreased warmth ratings for androids presented in videos. Animal Reminder Sensitivity, Neuroticism, its Anxiety facet, and Religious Fundamentalism significantly predicted (...) uncanny valley sensitivity. In addition, Concern over Mistakes and Personal Distress significantly predicted android eerie ratings but not warmth. The structural equation model indicated that Religious Fundamentalism operates indirectly, through robot-related attitudes, to heighten uncanny valley sensitivity, while Animal Reminder Sensitivity increases eerie ratings directly. These results suggest that the uncanny valley phenomenon may operate through both sociocultural constructions and biological adaptations for threat avoidance, such as the fear and disgust systems. Trait indices that predict uncanny valley sensitivity warrant investigation by experimental methods to explicate the processes underlying the uncanny valley phenomenon. (shrink)

Munch-Jurisic’s account of perpetrator disgust raises important new questions concerning the complexity of emotions and their connection with moral actions. In this commentary, we discuss this account by applying some of the author’s ideas to the case of anger. We suggest that just as the relations between disgust and moral action are much more nuanced than previously thought, as Munch-Jurisic explains, analyses of anger can also profit from a more careful approach to such connections. Specifically, we propose that (...) contextual factors can affect the moral character of anger reactions, which in turn can provide them with moral value. We also argue that the contextual view deployed to study disgust reactions can also support distinctions between core forms and socio-moral forms of the same emotion, which in turn raises interesting questions concerning different forms of anger. Lastly, we extend the contextual approach to problems of emotion individuation and theories in emotion science, showing how current scientific emotion theories can learn from a detailed examination of disgust, anger, and other context-sensitive emotions. We aim to highlight some important contributions of Munch-Jurisic’s work to broader discussions on emotions, morality, and how to theorize about emotions overall. (shrink)

Prior studies suggest that psychological difficulties arise from higher trait rejection sensitivity (RS)—heightened vigilance and differential detection of social rejection cues and defensive response to. On the other hand, from an evolutionary perspective, rapid and efficient detection of social rejection cues can be considered beneficial. We conducted a survey and an electrophysiological experiment to reconcile this seeming contradiction. We compared the effects of RS and rejection detection capability (RDC) on perceived interpersonal experiences (Study 1) and on neurocognitive processes in (...) response to cues of social rejection (disgusted faces; Study 2). We found that RS and RDC were not significantly related, although RS was positively related to perceived social rejection experiences and RDC was positively related to perceived social inclusion experiences. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) revealed that higher RS was related to cognitive avoidance (i.e., P1) and heightened motivated attention (i.e., late positive potential: LPP), but not to facial expression encoding (i.e., N170) toward disgusted faces. On the other hand, higher RDC was related to heightened N170 amplitude, but not to P1 and LPP amplitudes. These findings imply that sensitivity to rejection is apparently distinct from the ability to detect social rejection cues and instead reflects intense vigilance and defensive response to those cues. We discussed an alternative explanation of the relationship between RS and RDC from a signal detection perspective. (shrink)

“A sentimental layman would feel, and ought to feel, horrified, on being admitted into [an expert art] critic's mind, to see how cold, how thin, how void of human significance, are the motives for favour or disfavour that there prevail.” Thus writes William James. The art-world is dominated by critics who sneer and sentimentality, resist evocation, and issue stale, dispassionate appraisals. Memorized standards are coolly deployed to scan works for the features that are currently in fashion, before an icy verdict (...) is delivered. Untutored art enthusiasts make aesthetic judgments in an entirely differently way. For them, appraisal is read off “the sounding board of the body.” They use their emotions. Thus, according to James, there are two ways to assess art: cold and hot. So who is right, the rhapsodical museum-goer or the effete professional critic? As a first pass, I side with the rhapsodies. I think dispassionate appraisal is parasitic on passionate appraisal. Cool reason can never be sufficient on its own to assess artistic merit. This is a corollary of “aesthetic sentimentalism”—a view was championed by Hume and other British moralists. Of course, aesthetic sentimentalism does not entail that critics are wrong when they depart from the bubbling masses. It entails merely that good critics must be slaves to their own passions. Hacks may deliver aesthetic judgments dispassionately, but more sensitive critics have been known to muster an occasional gasp or thrill. Perhaps the refined emotions of professional critics have more validity than the crude gushings of James ’s “sentimental layman.” True beauty may be restricted to those works that elicit goosebumps in skilled viewers. Hume flirts with this idea. He thinks John Milton is objectively better than John Ogilby. Why? Because John Dryden said so, and he should know. John D. can arbitrate between the merits of John M. (shrink)

In this study conducted during the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic, I explored how trait morbid curiosity was related to interest in 1) factual information about Coronavirus that was specifically morbid; 2) general factual information about Coronavirus; 3) pandemic and virus genres of films and TV shows; and 4) genres of film and TV shows that center around threat more broadly. Participants who scored high in morbid curiosity reported increased interest, compared to usual, in pandemic/virus genres as well as horror and thriller (...) genres. Morbidly curious participants were also more interested specifically in morbid information about Coronavirus. Furthermore, disgust sensitivity was unrelated to these preferences. These results provide initial evidence that trait morbid curiosity can predict particular media preferences in the face of a real threat, and that morbid curiosity may reflect an adaptive predisposition in some individuals toward learning about the dan­gerous and disgusting aspects of a threat. (shrink)

Disputes between those holding differing political views are ubiquitous and deep-seated, and they often follow common, recognizable lines. The supporters of tradition and stability, sometimes referred to as conservatives, do battle with the supporters of innovation and reform, sometimes referred to as liberals. Understanding the correlates of those distinct political orientations is probably a prerequisite for managing political disputes, which are a source of social conflict that can lead to frustration and even bloodshed. A rapidly growing body of empirical evidence (...) documents a multitude of ways in which liberals and conservatives differ from each other in purviews of life with little direct connection to politics, from tastes in art to desire for closure and from disgust sensitivity to the tendency to pursue new information, but the central theme of the differences is a matter of debate. In this article, we argue that one organizing element of the many differences between liberals and conservatives is the nature of their physiological and psychological responses to features of the environment that are negative. Compared with liberals, conservatives tend to register greater physiological responses to such stimuli and also to devote more psychological resources to them. Operating from this point of departure, we suggest approaches for refining understanding of the broad relationship between political views and response to the negative. We conclude with a discussion of normative implications, stressing that identifying differences across ideological groups is not tantamount to declaring one ideology superior to another. (shrink)

Why do we watch and like horror films? Despite a century of horror film-making and en-tertainment, little research has examined the human motivation to watch fictional horror and how horror film influences individuals’ behavioural, cognitive and emotional re-sponses. This review provides the first synthesis of the empirical literature on the psy-chology of horror film using multi-disciplinary research from psychology, psychotherapy, communication studies, development studies, clinical psychology, and media studies. The paper considers the motivations for people’s decision to watch horror, why (...) people enjoy horror, how individual differences influence responses to, and preference for, hor-ror film, how exposure to horror film changes behaviour, how horror film is designed to achieve its effects, why we fear and why we fear specific classes of stimuli, and how lik-ing for horror develops during childhood and adolescence. The literature suggests that (1) low empathy and fearfulness are associated with more enjoyment and desire to watch horror film but that specific dimensions of empathy are better predictors of people’s re-sponses than are others; (2) there is a positive relationship between sensation-seeking and horror enjoyment/preference but this relationship is not consistent; (3) men and boys prefer to watch, enjoy and seek our horror more than do women and girls; (4) women are more prone to disgust sensitivity or anxiety than are men and this may mediate the sex difference in the enjoyment of horror; (5) younger children are afraid of symbolic stimuli whereas older children become afraid of concrete or realistic stimuli; (6) in terms of coping with horror, physical coping strategies are more successful in younger children; priming with information about the feared object reduces fear and increases children’s enjoyment of frightening television and film. A number of limitations in the literature are identified, including the multifarious range of horror stimuli used in studies, disparities in methods, small sample sizes, and a lack of research on cross-cultural differences and similarities. Ideas for future research are explored. (shrink)

This chapter examines the folk concept of disease by assessing (1) whether disease judgments are influenced by whether a condition is typical, dysfunctional, and disvalued and (2) whether they are influenced by the causes and symptoms of a condition. Results tentatively suggest that the folk concept of disease is naturalistic (i.e., value judgments don’t seem to matter) and perhaps not essentially causal (symptoms are sufficient for a condition to be a disease) and that gender and disgust sensitivity influence (...) disease judgment. (shrink)

Hume maintains that the boundaries of morality are widely drawn in everyday life. We routinely blame characters for traits that we find disgusting, on this account, as well as those which we perceive as being harmful. Contemporary moral psychology provides further evidence that human beings have a natural tendency to moralize traits that produce feelings of repugnance. But recent work also demonstrates a significant amount of individual variation in our sensitivities to disgust. We have sufficient reason to bracket this (...) emotion, therefore, when adopting the general point of view: if we allow idiosyncratic affective responses to shape our fully considered moral judgments, we could no longer reasonably expect spectators with different sensitivities to agree with us. (shrink)

Despite the upsurge of research on disgust, the implications of this research for the investigation of cultural pollution beliefs has yet to be adequately explored. In particular, the sensitivity of both disgust and pollution to a common set of elicitors suggests a common psychological basis, though several obstacles have prevented an integrative account, including methodological differences between the relevant disciplines. Employing a conciliatory framework that embraces both naturalistic and humanistic levels of explanation, this article examines the dynamic (...) reciprocal process by which contamination/contagion appraisals in individuals serve to shape—and are in turn shaped by—culture-specific pollution beliefs. This complex interrelationship is illustrated by examining ancient Near Eastern and modern ethnographic documentation of pollution beliefs, highlighting the underappreciated function of these pollution beliefs as folk theories for the spread of infectious disease. By evaluating how pollution beliefs shape contamination appraisals in individuals, it will be argued that cultural inheritance has played a much larger role in guiding disease avoidance behavior than has been previously recognized. (shrink)

Are people with flawed faces regarded as having flawed moral characters? An “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype is hypothesized to facilitate negative biases against people with facial anomalies (e.g., scars), but whether and how these biases affect behavior and brain functioning remain open questions. We examined responses to anomalous faces in the brain (using a visual oddball paradigm), behavior (in economic games), and attitudes. At the level of the brain, the amygdala demonstrated a specific neural response to anomalous faces—sensitive to disgust and (...) a lack of beauty but independent of responses to salience or arousal. At the level of behavior, people with anomalous faces were subjected to less prosociality from participants highest in socioeconomic status. At the level of attitudes, we replicated previously reported negative character evaluations made about individuals with facial anomalies, and further identified explicit biases directed against them as a group. Across these levels of organization, the specific amygdala response to facial anomalies correlated with stronger just-world beliefs (i.e., people get what they deserve), less dispositional empathic concern, and less prosociality toward people with facial anomalies. Characterizing the “anomalous-is-bad” stereotype at multiple levels of organization can reveal underappreciated psychological burdens shouldered by people who look different. (shrink)

Research has demonstrated large differences in the degree to which direct and indirect measures predict each other and variables including behavioural approach and attentional bias. We investigated whether individual differences in the co-variance of “implicit” and “explicit” spider fear exist, and whether this covariation exerts an effect on spider fear-related outcomes. One hundred and thirty-two undergraduate students completed direct and indirect measures of spider fear/avoidance, self-report questionnaires of psychopathology, an attentional bias task, and a proxy Behavioural Approach Task. TwoStep cluster (...) analysis using implicit and explicit spider fear as criterion variables resulted in three clusters: low explicit/low implicit; average explicit/high implicit; and high explicit/low implicit. Clusters with higher explicit fear demonstrated greater disgust propensity and sensitivity and less willingness to approach a spider. No differences between clusters emerged on anticipatory approach anxiety or attentional bias. We discuss results in terms of dual-systems and cognitive–behavioural models of fear. (shrink)

Most experimental studies of facial expression processing have used static stimuli (photographs), yet facial expressions in daily life are generally dynamic. In its original photographic format, the Karolinska Directed Emotional Faces (KDEF) has been frequently utilized. In the current study, we validate a dynamic version of this database, the KDEF-dyn. To this end, we applied animation between neutral and emotional expressions (happy, sad, angry, fearful, disgusted, and surprised; 1,033-ms unfolding) to 40 KDEF models, with morphing software. Ninety-six human observers categorized (...) the expressions of the resulting 240 video-clip stimuli, and automated face analysis assessed the evidence for 6 expressions and 20 facial action units (AUs) at 31 intensities. Low-level image properties (luminance, signal-to-noise ratio, etc.) and other purely perceptual factors (e.g., size, unfolding speed) were controlled. Human recognition performance (accuracy, efficiency, and confusions) patterns were consistent with prior research using static and other dynamic expressions. Automated assessment of expressions and AUs was sensitive to intensity manipulations. Significant correlations emerged between human observers’ categorization and automated classification. The KDEF-dyn database aims to provide a balance between experimental control and ecological validity for research on emotional facial expression processing. The stimuli and the validation data are available to the scientific community. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Empire Writes Back, With A VengeanceDenis DuttonOne of the more uplifting aspects of the turn toward theory in recent years has been the growth of postcolonial cultural studies. Postcolonial studies are in actuality constituted by counterdiscoursive, decolonizing practices which acknowledge the recognition of minority discourses, deconstructing hegemonic texts and imperialist metanarratives, opposing unduly overprivileging Western canonical paradigms of “literature,” and—well, you know what I mean. As Benita Parry (...) so lucidly explains, “The labor of producing a counter-discourse displacing imperialism’s dominative system of knowledge rests with those engaged in developing a critique from outside its cultural hegemony.” And what an awesome labor it is. The noted postcolonial theorist Georg M. Gugelberger sums things up by saying (I’m not inventing this) “postcolonialism can be conceptualized as the last bulwark against an encroaching total capitalism.”But what of the struggling masses of oppressed peoples whose interests and cultural sensitivities are so caringly looked after by practitioners of postcolonial studies? How do they feel about the fact that the only thing standing between them and “total capitalism” is resistance being mounted in a comparative literature department in Idaho, or someplace? This is a question seldom asked, let alone answered. Fortunately, new light has been thrown on the matter with the arrival of a booklet at this journal. Indian History from Above and Below, by Rukun Advani, is published by Ram Advani, probably a member of the family, in Lucknow. It is dedicated to “all Bengali intellectuals and those whose dollar salaries rise in proportion with obscurity and jargon.” Advani notes in his preface that although Bengali intellectuals talk torrents in their native tongue, when they [End Page 198] disseminate their thoughts abroad, they translate into a “clogged, colonial, unfluid flow,” with footnotes such as: “Derrida; ibid.; see my recent essay on the modes and moods of Foucault in JPS, III.iii, 3–333; on Lacan, see Lacan, On Lacan; Barthes, how many times a day do you have one in summer; idem., do you really?; differentiated peasantry; undifferentiated peasantry; for a feminist, though partially anthropologized, hermeneutic-critical discourse on the post-colonial subversive dimensions of the undifferentiated middle peasant in Midnapore district in June 1959, see the provocative controversy between Ranajit da and Amiya da in Gayatri di, ed., Gendered, Gendered, O Most Gendered: Epistemology and the Male Menopause in Bengal between June 1959 and July 1959 (Oxford University Press, forty years later).”The first of the booklet’s two essays, “Indian History from Below: a Swiftian Consideration,” discusses a neglected but “important arena of subaltern existence, namely the history of belching, wind-breaking and defecation.” Just to name these three functions posits “a bourgeois hierarchy of disgust with what Marx, in one of his most decisively Derridesque reflections, termed ‘The Asiatic Commode of Production.’” Beginning with the Foucauldian notion of “the peasant’s overdetermined relative autonomy from the olfactory,” Advani describes “the Barthesian notion of the impossibility of critical transcendence by the historian into either the symbiotic acculturation of the pastness, and indeed the presentness, of the present-subject, or indeed the even greater epistemological and hermeneutic problems posed by attempting a recreation of the ontological presuppositions of the peasant.” Much of this is elaborated in the classic essay by Professor Lavatri Lavatory Spewhack, “The Post-Colonial Lavatory and Its Radical Implications for Nomenclaturing Among Gendered and Subalternized Third World Expatriate-Marxist-Feminists in the First and Second Worlds: A Derivative Discourse Decoded.”The debt that Rukun Advani owes to Professor Spewhack is clear from the sheer number of his references to books and articles by her. These include, on the subject of toileting, Master Disgusted, Native Disgusting: a Perspective on Peasants from 250,000 Dollars per Annum, “On the Symbolic Hegemony of Subsection Numbers in a Gendered and Subalternized Post-Colonial Context: A Derivative Discourse Decoded” (in The Phenomenology of Praxis and the Praxis of Phenomenology in a Postmodern Residential Colony), “The Violence of Steam and the Episteme of Violence: Foucault’s Views on Hot Air Balloons” (in Obscurata), and even parts of her autobiography: The Larger than Life of Lavatri Lavatory [End Page 199] Spewhack (chapter titled “My Collected Phonecalls and Faxes”). While some... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Empire Writes Back, With A VengeanceDenis DuttonOne of the more uplifting aspects of the turn toward theory in recent years has been the growth of postcolonial cultural studies. Postcolonial studies are in actuality constituted by counterdiscoursive, decolonizing practices which acknowledge the recognition of minority discourses, deconstructing hegemonic texts and imperialist metanarratives, opposing unduly overprivileging Western canonical paradigms of “literature,” and—well, you know what I mean. As Benita Parry (...) so lucidly explains, “The labor of producing a counter-discourse displacing imperialism’s dominative system of knowledge rests with those engaged in developing a critique from outside its cultural hegemony.” And what an awesome labor it is. The noted postcolonial theorist Georg M. Gugelberger sums things up by saying (I’m not inventing this) “postcolonialism can be conceptualized as the last bulwark against an encroaching total capitalism.”But what of the struggling masses of oppressed peoples whose interests and cultural sensitivities are so caringly looked after by practitioners of postcolonial studies? How do they feel about the fact that the only thing standing between them and “total capitalism” is resistance being mounted in a comparative literature department in Idaho, or someplace? This is a question seldom asked, let alone answered. Fortunately, new light has been thrown on the matter with the arrival of a booklet at this journal. Indian History from Above and Below, by Rukun Advani, is published by Ram Advani, probably a member of the family, in Lucknow. It is dedicated to “all Bengali intellectuals and those whose dollar salaries rise in proportion with obscurity and jargon.” Advani notes in his preface that although Bengali intellectuals talk torrents in their native tongue, when they [End Page 198] disseminate their thoughts abroad, they translate into a “clogged, colonial, unfluid flow,” with footnotes such as: “Derrida; ibid.; see my recent essay on the modes and moods of Foucault in JPS, III.iii, 3–333; on Lacan, see Lacan, On Lacan; Barthes, how many times a day do you have one in summer; idem., do you really?; differentiated peasantry; undifferentiated peasantry; for a feminist, though partially anthropologized, hermeneutic-critical discourse on the post-colonial subversive dimensions of the undifferentiated middle peasant in Midnapore district in June 1959, see the provocative controversy between Ranajit da and Amiya da in Gayatri di, ed., Gendered, Gendered, O Most Gendered: Epistemology and the Male Menopause in Bengal between June 1959 and July 1959 (Oxford University Press, forty years later).”The first of the booklet’s two essays, “Indian History from Below: a Swiftian Consideration,” discusses a neglected but “important arena of subaltern existence, namely the history of belching, wind-breaking and defecation.” Just to name these three functions posits “a bourgeois hierarchy of disgust with what Marx, in one of his most decisively Derridesque reflections, termed ‘The Asiatic Commode of Production.’” Beginning with the Foucauldian notion of “the peasant’s overdetermined relative autonomy from the olfactory,” Advani describes “the Barthesian notion of the impossibility of critical transcendence by the historian into either the symbiotic acculturation of the pastness, and indeed the presentness, of the present-subject, or indeed the even greater epistemological and hermeneutic problems posed by attempting a recreation of the ontological presuppositions of the peasant.” Much of this is elaborated in the classic essay by Professor Lavatri Lavatory Spewhack, “The Post-Colonial Lavatory and Its Radical Implications for Nomenclaturing Among Gendered and Subalternized Third World Expatriate-Marxist-Feminists in the First and Second Worlds: A Derivative Discourse Decoded.”The debt that Rukun Advani owes to Professor Spewhack is clear from the sheer number of his references to books and articles by her. These include, on the subject of toileting, Master Disgusted, Native Disgusting: a Perspective on Peasants from 250,000 Dollars per Annum, “On the Symbolic Hegemony of Subsection Numbers in a Gendered and Subalternized Post-Colonial Context: A Derivative Discourse Decoded” (in The Phenomenology of Praxis and the Praxis of Phenomenology in a Postmodern Residential Colony), “The Violence of Steam and the Episteme of Violence: Foucault’s Views on Hot Air Balloons” (in Obscurata), and even parts of her autobiography: The Larger than Life of Lavatri Lavatory [End Page 199] Spewhack (chapter titled “My Collected Phonecalls and Faxes”). While some... (shrink)

There is increasing interest in clarifying how different face emotion expressions are perceived by people from different cultures, of different ages and sex. However, scant availability of well-controlled emotional face stimuli from non-Western populations limit the evaluation of cultural differences in face emotion perception and how this might be modulated by age and sex differences. We present a database of East Asian face expression stimuli, enacted by young and older, male and female, Taiwanese using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS). (...) Combined with a prior database, this present database consists of 90 identities with happy, sad, angry, fearful, disgusted, surprised and neutral expressions amounting to 628 photographs. 20 young and 24 older East Asian raters scored the photographs for intensities of multiple-dimensions of emotions and induced affect. Multivariate analyses characterized the dimensionality of perceived emotions and quantified effects of age and sex. We also applied commercial software to extract computer-based metrics of emotions in photographs. Taiwanese raters perceived happy faces as one category, sad, angry, and disgusted expressions as one category, and fearful and surprised expressions as one category. Younger females were more sensitive to face emotions than younger males. Whereas older males showed reduced face emotion sensitivity, older female sensitivity was similar or accentuated relative to young females. Commercial software dissociated six emotions according to the FACS demonstrating that defining visual features were present. Our findings show that East Asians perceive a different dimensionality of emotions than Western-based definitions in face recognition software, regardless of age and sex. Critically, stimuli with detailed cultural norms are indispensable in interpreting neural and behavioral responses involving human facial expression processing. To this end, we add to the tools, which are available upon request, for conducting such research. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the consideration of the image of zombie in two contexts, which are, firstly, the transformation of capitalist figures of production and consumption, and secondly, the transformation of desire and sensuality. Two models of socio-philosophical interpretation of zombies related to the development of capitalism are revealed: the consumer and the proletarian. They concern the discourse of the economic crisis and the disgust to “irrational consumption” and the discourse of the exploitation of the worker by dead (...) labor. It is noted that the image of zombie embodies total alienation, loss of social connection, which is based on emotional affinity, intimacy and affectivity. The figure of zombie is seen as the opposite of the Enlightenment model of human existence, which is characterized by a fundamental multiplicity, sensitivity and taste, which became the basis of a market economy. The image of zombie represents the fear of dissolving human diversity in the identity of desire and corporeality, which is destroyed and appears as “the same”. Zombies embody the instinct and infectivity of being. They denote “naked life”, the signs of which are the right to kill or exploit them. On the other hand, zombies are the embodiment of Use value: an empty post-capitalist, post-proletarian and post-consumer “life” reduced to pure need. Zombies figure represents the inner contradiction of capitalism: on the one hand, the fear of renewing a Labour power that is no longer able to work, and on the other, the fear of losing sensual diversity that suspends the endless process of consumption. Thus, the fear of zombie is a defensive reaction to capitalist existence. On the other hand, it is an adjustment of consciousness, when the coercion to work and consume is based on the fear of becoming a zombie, in the presence of an unconscious willingness to destroy those whom capitalism excludes as zombies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Appreciating Anorexia:Decisional Capacity and the Role of ValuesThomas Grisso (bio) and Paul S. Appelbaum (bio)Keywordscompetence, consent, anorexia, appreciation, decision makingTan and her colleagues (2006) reported that persons with anorexia nervosa typically manifest no difficulty satisfying the criteria for abilities associated with competence to consent to or refuse treatment. Their results led them to conclude that these patients generally had no problem grasping the nature of anorexia and its possible (...) consequences (understanding), typically did not have difficulty processing information when making treatment decisions (reasoning), and usually neither denied that they had a disorder nor manifested distorted beliefs about the potential consequences of treatment for the disorder.Nevertheless, these authors found, some anorexia patients said that they knew they might die and that they would rather die than suffer the alternative consequences (e.g., loss of identity, feeling of being disgusting). They point out that these beliefs, suggesting questionable competence, were not identified by the usual criteria for competence to consent to treatment. Therefore, they propose that we should consider a modification of the criteria for competence to consent to treatment. They argue for inclusion of "pathological values" as the basis for a finding of incompetence. Their notion of a pathological value (as we summarize it based on their Discussion) includes (a) a personal value (b) on which treatment refusal is based, that (c) is not authentic, and (d) is due to a mental disorder.Second, Tan and colleagues were concerned that the MacArthur Competence Assessment Tool for Treatment (MacCAT-T), currently used widely to assess competence to consent to treatment, did not seem to take values into account when examining deficits related to lack of appreciation or reasoning. They point out that most patients with anorexia nervosa in their study had "pathological values" that influenced their thinking about treatment, yet they did not obtain poor scores on the instrument's appreciation scale, which assesses whether patients deny that they have the illness or offer reasons for accepting or refusing treatment that are based on delusional premises or a serious distortion of reality. Moreover, almost all of the anorexia patients in the study obtained adequate scores on reasoning, which examines the ability to process options and consequences when weighing a treatment decision. [End Page 293]Reasons for Caution in Altering Criteria for CompetenceA fundamental step in considering Tan and her co-worker's proposal is to examine whether it is necessary to add a concept of "pathological values" to the legal construct of competence to consent to treatment. Modifying the legal doctrine of consent is important if that is needed to improve its validity or reliability. But modifications of the doctrine would have considerable costs, including a long process of producing logical and empirical evidence for its necessity, developing methods to assess the new concept, and then a process of debate, persuasion, and education to change laws, ethical guidelines, and medical training. Moreover, principles of theory building urge parsimony. A theory should employ no more concepts or assumptions than are required to account for the phenomena that the theory seeks to organize or explain. So one must be sure that modifications are truly necessary before adding complexity to the theory of decisional competence.In addition, there is an inherent danger in altering a concept like competence to consent to treatment on the basis of the study of any one mental disorder. It is not at all clear how the modification might influence findings of competence when applied to other disorders. Using a study of patients with anorexia nervosa as the impetus for changing the competence concept runs this risk. For example, anorexia is one of a class of mental disorders that is characterized by a failure to abstain from behavior (here, limiting food intake and other behaviors designed to reduce weight) that has negative consequences for the person. Other conditions in this category might include substance abuse disorders and impulse control disorders (e.g., pathological gambling). Even if one concludes that revised criteria for competence would reduce false-positive findings of competence in this group of disorders, one would have to consider carefully its impact on the full range of disabling mental conditions.Moreover, the sensitivity... (shrink)

According to the shared signal hypothesis the impact of facial expressions on emotion processing partially depends on whether the gaze is directed toward or away from the observer. In autism spectrum disorder several aspects of face processing have been found to be atypical, including attention to eye gaze and the identification of emotional expressions. However, there is little research on how gaze direction affects emotional expression processing in typically developing individuals and in those with ASD. This question is investigated here (...) in two multimodal experiments. Experiment 1 required processing eye gaze direction while faces differed in emotional expression. Forty-seven children participated. Their Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule scores ranged from 0 to 6 in the experiment. Event-related potentials were sensitive to gaze direction and emotion, but emotion processing did not depend on gaze direction. However, for angry faces the gaze direction effect on the N170 amplitude, as typically observed in TD individuals, diminished with increasing ADOS score. For neutral expressions this correlation was not significant. Experiment 2 required explicit emotion classifications in a facial emotion composite task while eye gaze was manipulated incidentally. A group of 22 children with ASD was compared to a propensity score-matched group of TD children. The same comparison was carried out for a subgroup of nine children with ASD who were less trained in social cognition, according to clinician’s report. The ASD group performed overall worse in emotion recognition than the TD group, independently of emotion or gaze direction. However, for disgust expressions, eye tracking data revealed that TD children fixated relatively longer on the eyes of the stimulus face with a direct gaze as compared with averted gaze. In children with ASD we observed no such modulation of fixation behavior as a function of gaze direction. Overall, the present findings from ERPs and eye tracking confirm the hypothesis of an impaired sensitivity to gaze direction in children with ASD or elevated autistic traits, at least for specific emotions. Therefore, we conclude that multimodal investigations of the interaction between emotional processing and stimulus gaze direction are promising to understand the characteristics of individuals differing along the autism trait dimension. (shrink)

“Sentiment” is a term of art, intended to refer to object-directed, irruptive states, that occur in relatively transient bouts involving positive or negative affect, and that typically involve a distinctive motivational profile. Not all the states normally called “emotions” are sentiments in the sense just characterized. And all the terms for sentiments are sometimes used in English to refer to longer lasting attitudes. But this discussion is concerned with boutish affective states, not standing attitudes. That poses some challenges that will (...) be my focus here. Rational sentimentalism is a cousin of fitting attitude theories of value, but other fitting attitude theories appeal to attitudes that are widely assumed to be governable by certain kinds of judgments. The basic challenge is this: are these boutish sentiments the sorts of things that we can and do regulate in the ways that are required for treating ‘shameful’, ‘funny’, ‘disgusting’ and the like as values? In what follows I briefly sketch some necessary conditions on treating something as a value, from which it emerges that treating sentimental values as values requires regulating the sentiments for fittingness. The rest of the paper is devoted to two ways of understanding how such regulation might work. I argue first that sentiments are susceptible to regulation by evaluative judgment, though perhaps not in quite the same way that philosophers have thought “judgment-sensitive attitudes” are regulated by judgment. I then suggest more tentatively that sentiments are also susceptible to regulation for fittingness in a different way: by educating sensibilities. (shrink)

In popular culture psychopaths are inaccurately portrayed as serial killers or homicidal maniacs. Most real-world psychopaths are neither killers nor maniacs. Psychologists currently understand psychopathy as an affective disorder that leads to repeated criminal and antisocial behavior. Counter to this prevailing view, I claim that psychopathy is not necessarily linked with criminal behavior. Successful psychopaths, an intriguing new category of psychopathic agent, support this conception of psychopathy. I then consider reactive attitude theories of moral responsibility. Within this tradition, psychopaths are (...) thought to be blameless as a result of their pronounced affective deficits. Psychopaths are considered morally blind because they lack the moral emotions that make us sensitive to moral reasons. I argue that, even if they are morally blind, psychopaths remain open to forms of blame stemming from non-moral reactive attitudes. These reactive attitudes remain appropriate because psychopaths can express hateful, disgusting, or contemptible non-moral values in their judgments. (shrink)

In earlier work I defended Intrinsic Attitudinal Hedonism—a view about what makes for individual personal welfare. On this view, a person’s level of welfare is entirely determined by the amounts of intrinsic attitudinal pleasure and pain he or she takes in things. The view seems to run into trouble in cases involving individuals who take their pleasure in disgusting, immoral things; and in cases involving individuals who take their pleasure in things that really don’t actually happen; and in cases involving (...) individuals who enjoy pleasures but who lead meaningless lives; and in cases involving individuals whose lives fail to manifest an attractive narrative structure. After sharpening up the objections, I introduce a distinction between Pure Welfare Narrowly Conceived and Enriched Welfare Broadly Conceived. I go on to claim that if this distinction is recognized, we will be able to say that each of the objections rests on the fallacy of equivocation. If, years ago, I had been more sensitive to the distinction between Pure Welfare and Enriched Welfare I would have been able to respond to the objections in a more coherent and effective way. I present that response here. In an appendix, I compare my current view with a related view defended by Shelly Kagan in ‘Me and My Life’. (shrink)

Empathy is essential in story comprehension as it requires understanding of the emotions and intentions of the characters. We evaluated the sensitivity of an emotional perspective-taking task using Aesop’s Fables in relation to empathy. Participants (N = 301) were presented with 15 short fables and were asked to rate the intensity of the emotions they would feel (anger, sadness, disgust, fear, surprise, joy, trust, and anticipation) by adopting the perspective of one of the characters (offender, victim) or the (...) observer’s perspective. A data-driven approach revealed that participants’ responses were aligned with the characters’ intentions, suggesting successful emotional perspective-taking. Participants sympathized with the victim rather than the offender, demonstrating affective sharing processes. Further, participants with higher empathy scores exhibited stronger negative emotions from the victim’s perspective, independently of their level of distress. Our task was not influenced by gender effects. We suggest that the Aesop’s Fables task could provide an indirect instrument to study empathy. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop an account of Nietzschean exemplarism. Drawing on my previous work, I argue that an agent’s instincts and other drives constitute her psychological type. In this framework, a drive counts as a virtue to the extent that it is well-calibrated with the rest of the agent’s psychic economy and meets with sentiments of approbation from the agent’s community. Different virtues are fitting for different types, and different types elicit different discrete emotions in people with fine-tuned affective (...) sensitivity, making Nietzsche’s exemplarism doubly pluralistic. Exemplars show us how a type is expressed in different social and cultural contexts. Some live up to the full potential of their type, while others are stymied and demonstrate how pernicious influences can wreck a person’s psychology. While some exemplars inspire admiration that leads to emulation, others elicit a range of other emotions, such as envy, contempt, and disgust. If this is right, then Nietzschean exemplarism offers a richer, more evaluatively and motivationally nuanced moral psychology than the monochrome admire-and-emulate model currently popular. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:“The Blessed in the Kingdom of Heaven Will See the Punishments of the Damned So That Their Bliss May Be More Delightful to Them”: Nietzsche and AquinasJames Lehrberger O.Cist.NO DECENT HUMAN BEING can read those words of St. Thomas Aquinas, which Frederick Nietzsche quotes in On the Genealogy of Morals1 (GM) without feeling horror, shock, and disgust: “‘The blessed in the kingdom of heaven,’ he [Aquinas] says meek (...) as a lamb, ‘will see the [End Page 425] punishments of the damned so that their bliss might be more pleasing to them.’” Nietzsche scholars regularly notice and comment on this passage from the Summa theologiae.2 The typical gloss takes it to show the spirit of hatred that lies at the heart of Aquinas’s Christianity. Thus Walter Kaufmann reads the quotation as showing how the Christian faith enables its adherents “to indulge their lust for revenge by hoping for the eternal torture and destruction of their persecutors.”3 Weaver Santinello echoes this sentiment when she claims that “‘the great teacher and saint [Aquinas]’ had a ‘bloodthirsty vision of Hell.’”4 Even so sensitive a Christian as Merold Westphal reads Nietzsche’s Aquinas in this way. “[I]t is hard to deny that the spirit of resentment and longing for vengeance burns hot in these passages... in them the final judgment makes the Final Solution seem almost moderate.”5 Similar comments and observations so abound in the scholarship that they form a virtual consensus on this Summa passage’s teaching.6This proliferation of such statements on Aquinas’s meaning, however, contrasts sharply with the absence of careful analyses [End Page 426] of the passage. I do not know, in fact, of a single article, book chapter, or study that takes Nietzsche’s quotation of Aquinas for its theme. More generally, despite the vast literature on Nietzsche and Christianity, comparative studies of Nietzsche and Aquinas are rare.7 The absence of substantive studies on the Genealogy’s use of the Aquinas quotation is doubly unfortunate. First, it silences or at least muffles the voice of Nietzsche. He cites Aquinas’s text in the specific context of Treatise I of the Genealogy. The quotation reveals the full meaning that Nietzsche intended it to convey only when it is read in that context. Second, it obscures and distorts the thought of Aquinas: the quotation must be read in its own context in the Summa theologiae to grasp the teaching that Aquinas intended his words to express.In light of Aquinas’s importance as a Christian theologian and the crucial role he plays in the Genealogy’s critique of moral values, I intend to examine Nietzsche’s presentation of this text. Careful study of this matter can shed light on a key question which has long been discussed and debated: Is Nietzsche’s account of Christianity as life-inimical rooted in an extraordinarily perceptive reading of the Christian psyche? Or is it based, rather, on a profound misunderstanding of that psyche? I will argue for two points: (1) that Nietzsche has utterly misconstrued Aquinas’s teaching; and (2) that Aquinas’s Christian morality, far from being life-inimical, is life-affirming. [End Page 427] More specifically, I will show not only that Aquinas is completely free from the hatred, envy, and vengefulness that Nietzsche attributes to him, but also that the virtues and beliefs he embraces, such as meekness, mercy, and divine justice, are strong and supportive of human flourishing.I will proceed in the following steps. First, I will investigate Nietzsche’s understanding of the Aquinas quotation in terms of the role it plays in the Genealogy’s First Treatise. As already noted, recognizing Nietzsche’s purpose in quoting Aquinas requires understanding the objections he develops to Christianity throughout that Treatise. Hence I will highlight the principal criticisms of Aquinas’s Christianity found there. Second, I will analyze the quotation from Aquinas in its own context in the Summa theologiae. Lastly, I will compare and contrast Nietzsche and Aquinas in terms of those issues which the quoted passage has brought to the fore. Nietzsche’s take on Aquinas, however, is the only question I will address. I do not... (shrink)

Nowadays, some of the things that are ḥarāmto be consumed, such as lard, its derivatives and alcohol are used as additives or additional nutrients in products, namely food and cosmetics that people use widely in daily life. The provision of these products, which are accepted as najis(impure), stands in front of us as one of the actual fiqh problems. In order to produce an accurate solution in this regard, the reaction condition and the level of dissolution in the product must (...) be determined. In this article, the level of mutanajjis (contamination) of the products that najisthings transforms through istihlāk(physical change) and the provision (hukm) of benefits from such things are examined. The research covers the discussions in the classical period regarding the provision of things, which included najāsah(impurity) and underwent physical change as well as the evaluations of contemporary Islamic jurists. The aim of this study is to contribute to the researches, which will be carried out to determine the provision of products containing ḥarāmelements. As the production is carried out on an industrial scale, such studies are important today in terms of the establishment of “ḥalāl” sensitivity and meeting the needs of people who have this sensitivity to learn the provision of such products.SummaryNowadays, in various sectors, especially food, feed, cosmetics, health and clothing industries, for the purposes of reducing the cost of the product, extending the shelf life, making the product more attractive in terms of color, consistency and aroma, many substances are added to the main material. The fact that some of the substances added are ḥarām(forbidden) such as blood, lard, pest, and ethyl alcohol require the subject to be considered in terms of fiqh. It is important to clarify two issues in order to reach a healthy result in the studies aiming to determine the provision (ḥukm) of the products that are mixed with najis(impure) substance. One of them is the determination of the level of istihlāk(physical change) in the mutanajjis(contamination) things. The second is the determination of the basic principles to be used in determining the provision of the things which najāsahhas undergone the physical change in. In this study conducted within the scope of this purpose and method, the hadīthsrelated to two different issues that are directly related to the subject have been evaluated as the basic textual basis. These are narrations about the cleanliness and pollution status of the contaminated water, and about the availability of fats and oils, which the dead mouse is seen in. It is stated in the narrations about the condition of the water that najāsah involved in, the water will not be najisunless its smell, taste or color changes because of the falling najāsahin it. According to this hadith, which shows the change of description as a measure, the fuqahāʾ(jurists) came to a consensus on the fact that water, which one of its characteristics changed because of najāsahwould be considered mutanajjis. When thishadithis evaluated together with the narrations that indicate the small amount of water is contaminated because of najāsah, in fact, it is seen that while the water is considered to be clean-najis, the situation of the water being affected from najāsahis taken as the basis and aimed to protect human health against the dirty water. At the time when there were not any one of today's microbiological analysis laboratories, the way to understand the pollution status of water was to see if the smell, color and taste of the water changed while taking the amount of the water into account. Since the rate of foreign matter in the water, the level of pollution and the health status of the water can be determined correctly in the laboratory today, operating the modern techniques as well as the measure of qualification change will be appropriate for the purpose of the hadīthsmentioned.In the narrations about the state of the fat, which the dead mouse is found in, it is seen that different operations are requested depending on the fat being solid or liquid. If the fat is liquid, different instructions have been made such as its being poured or used in lighting. Mālikīs, Shāfiʿīs, and Ḥanbalīfaqīhs (jurists) of the first period have ruled that liquids such as vinegar, milk and honey are mutanajjis, whether they are in little quantity or not, and whether their descriptions are changed or not, claiming that the amount of oil and the degree of impact on the dirt is not declared in the hadīths. The Ḥanafīs adopted the provision in the narrations mentioned pointing to a small amount of liquid oil and considered the measure of description change for a large amount of liquid valid. Ẓāhirīs, Ibn Taymiyyah and some of the faqīhsargued that the liquids which one cannot feel the color, taste or smell of the najāsahin are clean, regardless of the amount.These three approaches are open to criticism because the first is limited only to the literal meaning in the narrations and neglects the aims, and the second ignored the non-water fluids’ ability to hide the descriptions of the substance added to them, and the third evaluates the mustahlak substance (that has undergone a physical change) as if it had been istiḥālah(chemically changed). When the narrations related to the subject are examined, it is understood that while the usage of the liquid fat which the dead mouse was seen in as the food was prohibited, in fact, it was based on the foresight that all of the fat is affected by the mouse. It appears to have been ruled out that only the part polluted is the part affected by thenajāsahfor the fact that after the removal of the mouse and the environment from the solid oil exposed to the same contamination, the rest is allowed to be eaten. According to this, it is possible to say that the measure of mutanajjisin the things that affected by najāsahis in the degree of spreading of najāsah.Nowadays it is possible to determine the presence of najisthings in the main material, which is used as additive or addition, by the level of effect of these substances in the product, as well as by the assays. If the najissubstances used for purposes such as brightness, taste, consistency and extending shelf life, perform the expected functions, it means that they protect their presence in the product effectively. In fact, it should be acknowledged that these substances continue to exist effectively in the product, if they perform the targeted function without any chemical change, even the ratio in the product is low or the color, taste and odor are eliminated during the mixture.The faqīhswhile differed in opinion about the mutanajjisof things that the najāsahhad undergone physical changes in, they, in concert, considered the substances, which were not cleaned or could not be cleansed from which that they accept as mutanajjisby their own measurements, khabīs(disgusting), and have accepted the people’s eating of them as ḥarām. Likewise, they did not allow such things to be used in any way touching the body, clothing and containers. They have evaluated the narrations, which requires the spilth the fat that the dead mouse was seen in, as the main basis in this issue. On the other hand, about the use of the mutanajjisthings outside the human consumption area and in such a way that the clothes and body would not be contaminated; the majority of thefaqīhs preferred the mubāḥ provision. They have put forth the narrations as the basis that recommends the usage of the liquid oil in which the mouse was fallen in lighting. These approaches of the fuqahāʾabout the effect of the istihlākon the provision of making use of the things that affected by najāsahare of worth as the basic principles on the subject. It is possible to say that it is not permissible to consume food products containing lard or pork gelatin, and the chicken that has been torn apart while being left in hot water in order to pluck its feathers, and the egg which becomes mutanajjisfor it is boiled up with thenajāsahon, and the using of cosmetic products containing lard when today’s industrial products are evaluated in accordance with these principles. If taken the general opinion that defends that the ethyl alcohol is najis as the basis, the carbonated soft drinks, which are added to alcohol, can also be evaluated in this context. (shrink)

Although traditional economic models posit that money is fungible, psychological research abounds with examples that deviate from this assumption. Across eight experiments, we provide evidence that people construe physical currency as carrying traces of its moral history. In Experiments 1 and 2, people report being less likely to want money with negative moral history. Experiments 3–5 provide evidence against an alternative account that people's judgments merely reflect beliefs about the consequences of accepting stolen money rather than moral sensitivity. Experiment (...) 6 examines whether an aversion to stolen money may reflect contamination concerns, and Experiment 7 indicates that people report they would donate stolen money, thereby counteracting its negative history with a positive act. Finally, Experiment 8 demonstrates that, even in their recall of actual events, people report a reduced tendency to accept tainted money. Altogether, these findings suggest a robust tendency to evaluate money based on its moral history, even though it is designed to participate in exchanges that effectively erase its origins. (shrink)

Wildfires have become an increasing global threat to public health and quality of life. Many countries employ air quality monitoring and reporting systems to mitigate health risks associated with air pollution, including wildfire smoke. This study investigates the factors influencing individuals’ sensitivity to air quality information, specifically their likelihood of reducing or ceasing outdoor activities in response to air quality ratings, with a focus on wildfire smoke exposure in the western United States. Using the Bayesian Mindsponge Framework (BMF) analytics, (...) the study analyzed data from 2,237 participants in the Boise Metropolitan Area of Idaho and Boise State University. The findings reveal that women, older individuals, and those with higher educational levels are more likely to reduce outdoor activities at lower unhealthy AQI levels (the lowest being ‘good air quality,’ while the highest being ‘hazardous air quality’), while individuals with higher incomes are less responsive. Women and older adults, in particular, are even more likely to eliminate all outdoor activities. Additionally, individuals who perceive wildfire smoke as more severe than other natural disasters are more inclined to reduce or eliminate outdoor activities at lower unhealthy air quality levels. Experiences of wildfire smoke-related illness—either personally or within their households—further amplify this effect. These findings highlight the importance of localized, context-specific approaches to AQI dissemination and wildfire smoke risk communication to build resilience and safeguard public health in the face of escalating wildfire challenges driven by climate change. (shrink)