Adaptive Functions of Disgust:

Six dimensions of sexual disgust:

"In attempt to reclassify disgust as an emotion that evolved to solve important adaptive problems, evolutionary psychologists have begun to develop a functional framework of this emotion by considering the relevant selection pressures that were recurrently faced over our evolutionary history (Curtis, 2011, Curtis, Aunger, & Rabie, 2004, Curtis, De Barra, & Aunger, 2011; Oaten, Stevenson & Case, 2009; Shook, Oosterhoff, Terrizzi & Clay, 2017; Tybur et al., 2009; Tybur & Lieberman, 2016, Tybur, Lieberman, Kurzban, & DeScioli, 2013). These accounts argue that disgust evolved to solve or ameliorate three distinct adaptive problems: consumption or contact with infectious agents, mating with costly sexual partners, and the violation of social norms. Tybur et al. (2009) specifically hypothesizes that individuals must avoid sex with costly mates and sexual situations that reliably led to decrements in reproductive fitness during our evolutionary history. This hypothesis implies that if a potential mate or sexual situation is costly, then sexual disgust will be activated, and avoidance of sex will follow. Tybur et al. (2009)’s Three Domains of Disgust Scale (TDDS) reliably provides evidence that sexual disgust is a discrete component of disgust that has important implications for human mating.