Disgust Responses to Bitter Compounds: the Role of Disgust Sensitivity

It has been suggested that disgust evolved as an emotion that motivates the rejection of rotten and poisonous food. Core disgust is experienced primarily in relation to the sense of taste, and bitterness is an indicator of potential food toxicity. The purpose of the present two studies was therefore to test whether the personality traits disgust proneness (DP, tendency to experience disgust) and disgust sensitivity (DS, tendency to expect harmful consequences of experiencing disgust) are associated with the intensity of perceived bitterness and disgust during the tasting of bitter herbs (e.g., dandelion, wormwood). Bitter and neutral compounds were presented as dried powder (study 1) or as teas (study 2) to a total of 170 women with a mean age of 23.5 years. In both experiments, women with high DS reported to experience more disgust when tasting the bitter compounds, but they did not differ in their bitterness ratings from women with low DS scores. DP did influence neither disgust nor bitterness ratings. Trait disgust was not associated with the sensory perception of bitterness, but with its affective evaluation, the experienced disgust. High DS might be considered a hypersensitive alarm system to aversive taste.