Genetic and Environmental Influences on Disgust Proneness, Contamination Sensitivity, and Their Covariance

Abstract

Dozens of studies have indicated that individuals more prone to experiencing disgust have stronger symptoms of anxiety disorders—especially contamination sensitivity. However, no work has informed the degree to which this relationship arises from genetic factors versus environmental factors. In the present study, we fill this gap by measuring disgust proneness and contamination sensitivity in a sample of 7,199 twins and siblings of twins, including 1,411 complete twin pairs. Disgust proneness was related to contamination sensitivity, r = .32. Multivariate twin modeling revealed that genetic factors accounted for 34% and 40% of the variance in disgust proneness and contamination sensitivity, respectively, and that the correlation between the two traits reflected overlapping genetic (54%) and unshared environmental (46%)—but not shared environmental—influences. Although consistent with work indicating that disgust proneness relates to contamination sensitivity, results suggest that prevailing parental-modeling hypotheses for explaining this relationship be reevaluated.

What Role Does Pathogen-Avoidance Psychology Play in Pandemics?

“…A rapidly expanding literature has revealed the implications of these aspects of the behavioral immune system for phenomena ranging from political ideology [26,27] to intergroup relations [24,28], to psychopathology [29][30][31]. Even so, the behavioral immune system framework might have more limited application to pandemics than researchers realize.…”

Relations between HEXACO personality and ideology variables are mostly genetic in nature

“…The data collection plan was approved by the Ethical Review Board of A ˚bo Akademi University and sampling information is provided in Tybur et al (2020). We invited 33,211 twins and siblings of twins drawn from Finland's Central Population Registry to participate in this study, which was conducted online.…”

“…Twins were aged between 18 and 45 years (M ¼ 29.28, SD ¼ 7.75) and siblings between 18 and 58 (M ¼ 31.99, SD ¼ 8.43). See Tybur et al (2020) for a more detailed description of data collection procedures and zygosity estimation. 5 Instruments HEXACO-100.…”

Disgust and political attitudes

“…More tests, perhaps those investigating how observers perceive men and women who express disgust toward pathogen cues, will be necessary to further evaluate this hypothesis. Recent twin research has found that disgust sensitivity is similarly heritable in both men and women and that similarities between twins in disgust sensitivity are entirely accounted for by genetic rather than environmental similarities (Tybur et al, 2020). More work investigating the genetic, social, and nonsocial environmental factors shaping disgust sensitivity will be necessary to fully understand how trait disgust relates to ideology.…”