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Gender differences when touching something gross: unpleasant? No. Disgusting? Yes!

Alexander J Skolnick1

  • 1a Saint Joseph's University.

The Journal of General Psychology
|May 20, 2014
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Summary

Women report higher disgust sensitivity than men in touch-based tasks, but not for general unpleasantness. This study highlights gender differences in emotional responses to tactile stimuli.

Keywords:
disgustgender differenceshaptictouch

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Area of Science:

  • Psychology
  • Neuroscience
  • Sensory Science

Background:

  • Previous research indicates women report higher disgust sensitivity than men, primarily in visual contexts.
  • Few studies have explored gender differences in disgust perception using non-visual sensory modalities.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate gender differences in disgust and unpleasantness responses to haptic (touch) stimuli.
  • To test the hypothesis that women exhibit greater disgust but not greater unpleasantness than men in a tactile task.

Main Methods:

  • Forty-four undergraduates (29 women) participated in a haptic task involving touching eight out-of-sight objects.
  • Stimuli included neutral, pleasant, and disgust-evoking objects.
  • Participants reported sensory (unpleasantness) and emotional (disgust) responses to each object.

Main Results:

  • No significant gender differences were found in reported unpleasantness of the stimuli.
  • Women reported significantly higher disgust than men when touching disgust-evoking objects.
  • While unpleasantness correlated with disgust, the Disgust Scale-Revised was not a strong predictor of haptic disgust responses.

Conclusions:

  • This study differentiates between unpleasantness and disgust, demonstrating distinct emotional responses.
  • It provides the first evidence of gender differences in disgust sensitivity within a haptic, disgust-evoking task.
  • Findings suggest that gender differences in disgust perception may extend beyond visual stimuli to other sensory modalities.