Arousal does not lower the disgust value of non-sex-related disgust stimuli. Whether in a state of high sexual arousal or not, disgust stimuli not related to sex should still be avoided to the same extent. Sexual arousal is irrelevant to the cost attached to interacting with them.
Now the discussion turns to more ‘refined disgust’: that which involves elaborate cognitive processing.
Cognition, morals, guilt and disgust
The term ‘disgust’ can refer to both physical events and to morally unacceptable sexual practices. In the latter case there need not be any intrinsic physical triggers to disgust. In common with disgust triggered by physical stimuli, moral disgust also motivates the individual to put a distance, if only symbolic, between him-/herself and the offensive trigger (Kelly, 2011). It appears that evolution exploits (‘co-opts’) a biologically primitive process and adapts it to serve broader and more cognitively mediated roles. That is to say, built upon the basic brain processes underlying physical disgust, there are more complex and human-specific processes that involve the attachment of meaning, as in morally unacceptable practices.
Incestuous and paedophilic relations exemplify this. Pointing to the role of cognition, disgust at incest does not necessarily involve any undesirable sensory features of the guilty party. Indeed, the trigger might be the disgusted individual’s own hitherto much-loved father. Rather, it is the emotion attached to the prospect of sexual interaction, something meaning-related and involving processing beyond the sensory attributes of an individual.
So, does the use of ‘disgust’ to refer to both moral transgressions and the reaction to certain physical stimuli point to important common features, as implied by the term ‘moral dyspepsia hypothesis’ (Royzman et al., 2008)? Alternatively, when applied to morality is ‘disgust’ just a colourful metaphor? The sensations evoked, such as nausea and loss of appetite, are similar in the two cases. There are some common regions activated under both conditions of disgust, one being part of the orbitofrontal cortex (Chapter 2). Another pointer to overlap is that a similar facial reaction is observed in response to both types of trigger (Chapman et al., 2009). So, the expression ‘it leaves a bad taste in the mouth’ in response to a moral transgression reminds us of genuine overlap in physical and moral disgust.
There is a cultural transmission of information on unacceptable sexual events, which is based upon disgust. Note such expressions as ‘moral contamination’, ‘filthy mind’, ‘dirty books’, ‘impure thoughts’, ‘being sickened by your suggestion’ and ‘nauseated by paedophilia’ to describe unacceptable features of sexuality. Conversely, moral virtue is conveyed by such expressions as ‘clean mind’ and ‘virginal purity’.
Participants were asked to write a story in which they revived an incident from their past associated with guilt. This triggered a desire for physical cleaning (Zhong and Liljenquist, 2006). Related words, such as ‘wash’, were more easily accessed by the mind. Participants who had guilt triggered were more likely to select a wet-wipe as their reward for participation than were participants who recalled an ethical action. It can surely be no coincidence that the great religions of the world associate physical washing with purification of sins. Consider the biblical book of Jeremiah:
upon every high hill, and under every green tree, thou wanderest, playing the harlot…For though thou wash thee with nitre, and take thee much soap, yet thine iniquity is marked before me, saith the Lord God.
(Jeremiah 2:20–2)
Could differences in guilt between people explain, at least in part, differences in sexual desire? There is some suggestion that this is so, described next.
A cross-cultural study
Woo et al. (2011) compared Caucasian Canadians and Canadians of East Asian origin. Women of East Asian origin (China, Japan and Korea) show a more restricted sexuality than do Caucasian Canadian women. Restricted sexuality is indexed by such things as low reported levels of sexual pleasure, desire and arousal, while pain during intercourse is reported more frequently by East Asian women.
The researchers asked – what could mediate this difference in the two groups of women? Could the conservatism of the Asian women, as measured by what is considered appropriate sexual behaviour, reflect a role of increased guilt? Earlier studies showed a correlation between levels of guilt and sexual dysfunction in women. The researchers investigated a possible link between guilt and sexual desire. In their participant pool, Caucasian women experienced greater sexual desire in the four weeks preceding the survey than did the Asian women, while Asian women experienced higher levels of sexual conservatism and guilt. A role of acculturation was evident within the Asian group, with those women reporting greater acculturation to Canadian society reporting less guilt and more desire.
The researchers speculated on the origins of increased sex guilt amongst East Asian women, which led them to consider attitudes found in classic writings of the Confucian philosophy suggesting that sex is just for procreation. They also highlight implicit conservative attitudes towards sexuality by parents in traditional East Asian families, for example condemnation of premarital sex. Where excessive guilt appears to be a serious impediment to sexual functioning, the researchers suggested targeting it specifically by means of cognitive-behavioural interventions.
A hierarchy within morality and disgust
Consider the following (Haidt, 2001, p. 814):
Julie and Mark are brother and sister. They are travelling together in France on summer vacation from college. One night they are staying alone in a cabin near a beach. They decide that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love. At very least it would be a new experience for each of them. Julie was already taking birth control pills, but Mark uses a condom too, just to be safe. They both enjoy making love, but they decide not to do it again. They keep that night as a special secret, which makes them feel even closer to each other. What do you think about that, was it OK for them to make love?
Most people assert that a sexual relationship between siblings is morally wrong. When asked ‘why’, they search for a reason, arriving at such things as the dangers of inbreeding. On being reminded of the double precaution of contraception, they then find a different justification, such as that the siblings might be psychologically damaged by the experience. Finally, people are likely to say something like ‘I don’t know why but I just know that it is wrong.’ The person acknowledges that their initial rationale was wrong but cannot find a better one, so clings to the initial belief (Kelly, 2011).
The conviction that sex between siblings is wrong appears to be based in large part upon the emotion of disgust. This would normally lower the desire felt by the siblings for each other, though apparently not excessively so with Julie and Mark! When people are presented with this scenario, the gut feeling of disgust is specifically based upon the incestuous nature of the action rather than, say, that arising from its casual and uncommitted nature (Royzman et al., 2008).
Haidt advances a model, in which two layers (‘processes’) of moral evaluation run in parallel. There is high-level conscious and rational moral reasoning that can generate evidence-based moral decisions and this process has historically dominated academic thinking on morality. The reasoning is open to introspection, something like how a good judge in a court of law weighs up the evidence.
However, according to Haidt, often a different (‘lower’) level of control takes the weight of responsibility: automatic and unconscious processing is dominant. Acting at this level, moral decisions are based upon the rapid unconscious production of moral emotions, the outcome of which is then presented to conscious awareness. A gut-feeling just pops into consciousness with no effort involved in its production and no insight as to how it was generated. Conscious processes then search for a justification for the moral emotion, for example it is wrong to inflict inbreeding on the world.
Haidt suggests that metaphors serve to link the physical to the moral. That is, the moral feeling of contamination derives from
the early understanding of physical contamination in the case of foods that have gone bad or have been poisoned. In some cases, a single exposure to so-called moral impurity is sufficient for a life-time’s contamination, as in the case of the shame associated with what is perceived as an inappropriate loss of virginity.
In trying to understand moral emotions, their role in behaviour and why there are such wide differences, it is useful to ask where moral emotions came from in the development of the child. Haidt suggests that morality is not built upon a metaphorical ‘blank slate’. Rather, particular brain processes underlie morality and they are formed during early brain development. However, moral reasoning depends also upon an environmental input to the brain and this can vary across cultures. He suggests (2001, p. 826):
morality, like language, is a major evolutionary adaptation for an intensely social species, built into multiple regions of the brain and body, which is better described as emergent than as learned, yet which requires input and shaping from a particular culture.
Where are the biological bases of these intuitive feelings? Haidt uses the idea of Damasio on somatic markers for insight here, pointing to the role of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex in integrating bodily feelings and cognitions. So, for example, incest might be judged to be wrong since, quite literally, it generates gut-feelings that are integrated with the corresponding cognition at the level of the prefrontal cortex to produce the moral emotion.
Economic exchange and inhibition
In economic transactions, there is the notion of a fair price and a fair exchange. Could this be applied to sex? The notion of economic exchange is not alien to the world of sex and marriage (Huston, 1974). Certain cultures have the notion of a fair exchange in the dowry system. Of course, prostitution is a pure economic exchange. Rich men endow their wives and mistresses with cars and jewels, often it would seem as an exchange for a partner displaying youth and good looks. The kind of complaint ‘All he seems to want is sex now. He never brings flowers’, is surely not just apocryphal or a feature of bawdy 1950s English film comedies. One hears such comments as ‘…not even if he were the last man on earth. It’s disgusting.’ The man in question might display no obvious intrinsic triggers to disgust but a sexual liaison would not be perceived as a fair exchange.
A closer look at the nature of conflict and temptation
The notion of temptation suggests the co-existence of a desire and a goal which is incompatible with giving in to the desire. Whether a person succumbs to temptation depends, one supposes, upon the relative strengths of excitation and inhibition. A short-term ‘hedonic’ goal is pitted against a more ‘sensible’ long-term goal (Hofmann et al., 2009). The more hedonic option, for example pizza, offers short-term hedonism but alas potential long-term negative consequences, such as a bigger waistline. This is relative to the less hedonic, but more rational, choice, for example to eat lettuce. The reaction to the potent incentive can start in an automatic mode, for instance when attention is grabbed by an odour or a display of pornography, whereas resistance is in the conscious and controlled mode.
Some classical accounts of temptation
The biblical story describing Eve in the Garden of Eden exemplifies temptation. The story is not explicitly sexual. However, the symbolism is obvious and the story has some important messages for the study of sexual temptation. Eve was commanded by God that she could eat from any but the tree of knowledge. She disobeyed God’s command and, from then on, all hell was let lose – quite literally so.
In the eighteenth century, Ann Lee, a pioneer of the religious movement ‘the Shakers’, claimed to have received a message from God that the apple should really be interpreted as sexual intercourse (Wilson, 1999, p. 375). The message was conveyed from England to America and the sect thereafter practised celibacy. Alas, this was not a strategy likely to spawn many offspring and the sect’s adherents dwindled in number.
One would surely need to be tough-minded not to have sympathy for Eve, since she appears to have just about everything going against her (if ‘sexually attractive other’ is substituted for ‘fruit’ in the below, it makes even more sense):
The fruit was novel. Whether sexual or food-related, novel stimuli tend to powerfully trigger the incentive system.
The fruit was present in the here and now, whereas God’s command was in the past. To serve as restraint, the memory of this command needed to be brought into active memory. A memory was being pitted against a physically present incentive.
The fruit was forbidden, which might have increased its attraction value.
The consequences of any transgression were not immediate but rather delayed. Indeed, we are still said to be paying the price some thousands of years down the line.
The serpent encouraged Eve to eat the fruit, an example of social facilitation.
Temptation was also described by the Islamic scholar Ibn Hazm. A young man was tempted by the married wife of a friend but then had second thoughts and took pre-emptive action:
he laid his forefinger against the lamp until it was scorched, and said, ‘O my soul, taste thou this: and what is this to compare with the fire of Hell?’
(Ibn Hazm, 1027/1953, p. 264)
This enabled him to resist the second advance of the woman. Just as with Tolstoy’s story of Father Sergius, temptation might only be resistible by an even stronger aversive force.
Consider St Paul:
I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.
(1 Corinthians 7:8, 9)
Of course, Paul does not address the problem of being married and still burning. Later versions of the Bible make the meaning of the second verse clearer, bringing it into line with modern psychology:
But if they do not have self-control, let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
(New American Standard Bible, 1995)
The modern version is a help to anyone, who like me on first encountering the statement as a worried child, took ‘to burn’ to be a reference to eternal damnation.
St Paul’s advice on resisting fornication exemplifies several things about sexual desire and its possible link to sexual action:
Desire is a powerful motivator of action. The notion of burning suggests an aversive state that arises in the body but which can be corrected by marriage.
Excitatory and inhibitory determinants of behaviour can be in a struggle for control.
The restraining control arises from something intrinsic to the individual, later interpreted as ‘self-control’.
Even in the absence of a sexual outlet, a sufficiently high level of self-control is able either to lower the intensity of the burning or at least restrain its effects.
Consider the temptation involved in sexually motivated looking:
Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery;
But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
(Matthew 5:27–8)
The gospel goes on to argue that, if the man’s right eye is the weak link leading to such lust, then, interpreted literally, he should gouge it out to avoid damnation. A somewhat more benign solution might be to adopt a conscious high-level strategy to try to divert the gaze, though it could well fail when the high-level control experiences fatigue. Former United States President, Jimmy Carter, famously reported his own, even more benign, interpretation of these Biblical words:
I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times. This is something that God recognizes I will do – and I have done it – and God forgives me for it.
In what is perhaps history’s most famous example of someone hedging bets, St Augustine’s prayer must surely trigger the empathy of anyone having experienced such a dilemma:
I had prayed to you for cha
stity and said ‘Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.’ For I was afraid that you would answer my prayer at once and cure me too soon of the disease of lust, which I wanted satisfied, not quelled.
(Augustine, Confessions, VIII.7)
Augustine documented the experience of intrusive thoughts, characterized as voices that suggested giving in to temptation. He contemplated a life free of such temptation:
They plucked at my garment of flesh and whispered, ‘Are you going to dismiss us? From this moment we shall never be with you again, for ever and ever.
(Confessions, VIII.11)
The heat of the moment
The notion of the ‘heat of the moment’ is central to understanding temptation and capitulation to it (Ariely and Loewenstein, 2006; Nordgren et al 2009). The hot state is triggered by the physical presence of the tempting incentive. First, consider when a person is in a relatively ‘cold’ emotional state, a safe distance from temptation. In this ‘cold state’, people typically underestimate the strength of temptation that would arise if they were in a hot state and being pulled by so-called ‘visceral impulses’. This miscalculation is termed the ‘cold-to-hot empathy gap’; the inability, when in a cold state, to empathize with hot feelings. People commonly exhibit what is termed a ‘restraint bias’, a tendency to overestimate their capacity to oppose the lure of visceral impulses and they tend to fall victim to temptation unexpectedly.
How Sexual Desire Works- The Enigmatic Urge Page 25