The connection between disgust sensitivity and blood-related fears, faintness symptoms, and obsessive-compulsiveness in a non-clinical sample

We investigated whether disgust sensitivity is associated with subjective, behavioral, and somatic symptoms of blood-injection-injury fears as well as with obsessive-compulsiveness. Two hundred and twenty one students and university employees completed the Disgust Scale (DS), the Mutilation Questionnaire (MQ), the Blood Injection Symptom Scale (BISS), and the Maudsley Obsessional Compulsive Inventory (MOCI). The MQ focusing on emotional and motor responses when exposed to blood and mutilation was substantially correlated with the DS ( r =0.58). In contrast, somatic blood-phobia symptoms (BISS) showed a negligible association with the DS ( r= 0.14). Faintness symptoms, which have been considered to reflect intense disgust responses, also were insignificantly related to the DS ( r =0.14). The MOCI including all subscales was positively correlated with the DS ( r =0.35), indicating that disgust-prone subjects showed an enhanced tendency for repeated washing and checking.