A gender invariant model of disgust propensity in blood-injection-injury phobia in Latina/o individuals

Abstract

Latinas/os have been underrepresented in research investigating the role of disgust propensity in phobias. The current study was the first to examine associations between disgust propensity and Blood-Injection-Injury (BII) phobia, when acculturation was controlled for, in Latina/o Americans (n = 376). A structural model was developed with a BII fear latent variable consisting of fears of injection, blood, and sharp objects (causing injuries). The disgust propensity latent variable was formed with three domains of core, animal reminder, and contamination disgust elicitors. In the model, disgust propensity predicted BII fear when controlling for acculturation. A series of measurement and structural invariance tests demonstrated that the model was invariant between males and females. The current findings supported the hypothesis that disgust plays a role in BII fear symptoms similarly in Latinas and Latinos. The findings are expected to improve our understanding of mechanisms and treatment approaches for BII phobia symptoms in this underserved cultural group.

Common and separable behavioral and neural mechanisms underlie the generalization of fear and disgust

“…Individuals with high disgust proneness are more susceptible to developing dysregulated avoidance responses in terms of contamination-associated obsessivecompulsive disorder (OCD), blood-injection-injury phobia, and small animal phobias (e.g., Bhikram et al, 2017;Cougle et al, 2016;Hirai et al, 2018;Olatunji et al, 2017). Woody et al (2005) moreover demonstrated that disgust plays an important role in avoidance symptoms in spider phobias such that individuals with high fear experienced both, stronger anxiety and disgust as compared to individuals with low fear.…”