11/28/2002
She Ate a Fly
WARNING: IF YOU''RE EASILY DISGUSTED OR HAVE A QUEASY STOMACH, DO NOT READ THIS COLUMN!
Last week''s episode of Everybody Loves Raymond was disgusting; yet I found it very funny. Raymond''s brother Robert brought a newfound female acquaintance to dinner. Robert, divorced and unlucky in affairs of the heart, considered this young lady to possibly be "The One". However, a strange thing happened. There was a large fly buzzing around in the dining room and the gal proved quite adept, clapping her hands and killing the fly, which dropped on the table. Raymond offered to remove it but the gal said no, placed the fly on her napkin and folded it over the fly. While the rest of the family was in the kitchen, Raymond saw her unfold the napkin, eat the fly and then down it with red wine! Although I thought that red wine was the proper choice to accompany raw fly, Raymond was stunned.
When Raymond told Robert and the rest of the family what he had witnessed, nobody believed him. Such a nice young lady could not have engaged in such a disgusting act. Robert left in a huff, taking his date back to her apartment, where their relationship seemed about to evolve to an intimate stage. Robert, however, ended up exiting the apartment by way of a bedroom window upon discovering the room to be inhabited by what must have been hundreds of live frogs! His exit was hastened by the young lady''s assertion that we all are descended from frogs!
The day after this Raymond episode, I found in my December issue of Discover magazine an article by Josie Glausiusz titled "Oh Yuck". The subject of the article was "disgust". Coming on the heels of the Raymond episode, it was obvious that disgust was meant to be the subject of this column. A visit to Britain''s Channel 4 Web site revealed that it had actually run a series of programs on the anatomy of disgust. For some reason it seems British researchers have a particular interest in the subject.
Mary Phillips, at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, terms disgust "the forgotten emotion of psychiatry". Is disgust a product of evolution, inherent in our genes, or is it a learned emotion? Both Sigmund Freud and Charles Darwin weighed in on the matter. As you might expect, Freud was of the opinion that disgust arises from our relationships with our parents at an early age. Appropriately, those supporting Freud''s position employ our feelings towards a substance that disgusts virtually everyone. In light of the recent election, with its Republican slant, I will discuss this universally disgusting substance, a form of human and animal excrement, by the more delicate term made fashionable by George Bush number 41. I''m referring of course to doo-doo, as in "deep doo-doo".
Freud and others cite a baby''s reaction to doo-doo as showing that disgust a learned emotion. The argument is that the typical infant shows no distaste for its doo-doo. Many years ago, I witnessed such a disgusting example of a baby''s lack of distaste for doo-doo that to this day I feel queasy when I think about it. It takes time, a number of years witnessing its parents'' feelings about doo-doo, before the child develops an aversion to doo-doo. Freud argued that this aversion develops into disgust, which serves to control the baser instincts of us humans so that society can function with a modicum of civility.
Darwin, on the other hand, believed that disgust was a product of evolution that protects us from harmful consequences. For example, disgust would prompt us to avoid eating rotten meat or other substances that could do us harm. However, Darwin was willing to concede that disgust was also shaped by subsequent cultural influences and likened disgust to emotions that require a value judgment. Such emotions as contempt or pride fall in this category.
It''s been more than a century since Darwin and Freud expressed those views. Today, science offers new techniques to study the nature of disgust. Mary Phillips runs MRI brain scans of subjects shown pictures of disgusting objects or situations. Phillips finds that the area of the brain that is most stimulated by disgust is a part of the brain that evolved millions of years prior to the development of human civilization. It was quite a bit later that the part of the brain dealing with rational thought came on the scene. Therefore, Phillips argues that disgust is deeply imbedded in the brain and isn''t just a learned emotion.
Psychologist Paul Rozin falls in the middle camp that allows for both innate disgust and cultural shaping of the emotion. Rozin cites a baby''s reaction when it encounters a bitter food. There''s an obvious expression of "distaste" that the baby shows quite clearly. Rozin thinks that this distaste is molded by experience into the more complex emotion of disgust. As mentioned, we show no distaste for doo-doo as infants. Most of us don''t show any aversion to chocolate, either as children or as adults. Let''s combine the two by making realistic looking chocolate dog doo- doo. Rozin has found that, up to the age of eight or so, children will eat chocolate doo-doo, sometimes needing to be assured that it is indeed chocolate. Older children and adults will typically not eat such an object, even if assured of its edible nature - a clear case of cultural influence on our concept of disgust.
Valerie Curtis is an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She travels around the world to help motivate people to maintain good hygiene. Her specialty is the number two killer of children, diarrheal diseases. The main prop she uses in her mission is a lump of artificial doo-doo, which she has found to be universally considered as disgusting. I won''t go into many of the other things associated with bodily functions or reactions that she has found to be disgusting to people almost everywhere. (Her experience has turned up other objects of particular regional disgust such as dead sparrows and cruelty to horses in Britain, politicians and dog saliva in the Netherlands and kissing in public in India.)
Everyone is disgusted by something. I don''t watch any of the so- called reality shows on TV and some of the promos, such as one I saw recently of a terrified and weeping woman in a pit full of some vile kind of creepy crawly critters, totally turn me off. But one of the characteristics of disgusting objects or scenarios is that, though repulsive, many are fascinated by them. Hence the popularity of these reality shows. Prior to 9/11, Mayor Rudy Giuliani was so disgusted with the use of dung in a work of art involving the Virgin Mary that he proposed cutting off funding of the art museum exhibiting the work. The resulting outcry, both critical and supportive of his proposal, drew more people to the museum than would have come without the publicity.
Sometimes disgust can be overcome, but at a brutal cost. Mary Phillips and her co-worker Andy Calder of Cambridge University have found that one of the areas of the brain stimulated by disgust is called the insula. The insula is involved in taste; if it is stimulated during brain surgery the patient feels nausea and has a bad taste in his mouth. If your insula is damaged, it might leave you without a sense of disgust. The Discover article cites the case of a fellow who had a stroke that damaged his insula. After his stroke, he reportedly would eat soup stirred by a fly swatter (washed), eat chocolate doo-doo and sleep in a bed on which someone died the night before. I''d just as soon keep my insula intact!
There''s a lot more to say about disgust, but I''m disgusted enough and presume you are too. I have the feeling that the answer to the question about disgust being innate or learned will be found when the old "nature versus nurture" argument is settled - not in my lifetime. I promise to return to a more palatable subject next week.
Allen F. Bortrum
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