Disgust

Objective:

We have aimed to defi ne disgust, that is largely accepted as one of the basic emotions, its prominent descriptive models emerging with recent studies, neurobiology as well as its developmental process in children, through an elaborate review of relevant literature.

Method:

Pubmed, Scopemed and Google search engines were used to reach out to the literature about disgust, recently published reviews on the subject were elaborately evaluated, as well as making use of relevant articles.

Results:

Disgust, classifi ed as a basic emotion, helps the human body protect itself from illnesses and infections by its function to avoid pathogens. Through a review of relevant literature in detail, it was seen that two theories dominated the literature regarding disgust; evolutionary/conventional model, and functional model. Besides its well known function to protect the body from infections, interpersonal disgust, sexual disgust and moral disgust have also been identifi ed. . Children tend to recognize disgust as an emotion better gradually, as they grow older. Information concerning disgust is maintained both via context and through the standard facial expression ,refl ecting disgust. . While majority of children tend to identify disgust as anger until 8 years of age,, more than half are able to correctly describe the emotion as disgust, upon taking a look at relevant facial expressions refl ecting the emotion, approximately at 9 years of age.

Discussion:

Besides its evolutionary and functional aspects and classifi ed as one of the basic emotions, disgust seems to provide an important and novel space for research as a theme, since much needs to be elucidated yet, including underlying cognitive phases, the processes that yield to its development in children, neurobiological underpinnings and infrastructure, as well as defi ning its relationship with psychiatric disorders.