The Classification Of Disgust By Quasi-fear Disgust, Quasi-anger Disgust And Pure Disgust

Disgust is one of the basic emotions of human beings. Disgust has its characteristic facial expressions, behavioral responses, physiological manifestation and feeling state. Because of disgust are closely related with the many mental disorders, the study of disgust reach to a certain value in theory and practice.From recent studies we can find that stimuli which can elicit disgust shows the diversity, and the classification of disgust based on the studies concerning the structure of the disgust relays on different standard. So the result of classification is something divergence. Based on the study of disgust?s classification from Lee et al.(2001) and other studies relating with the classification of disgust, this paper creatively divides disgust into three parts: quasi-fear disgust, quasi-anger disgust and pure disgust. Quasi-fear disgust relates with security and survival, quasi-anger disgust relates with moral transgression, pure disgust relates with contamination and pathogen. 3 experiments are launched to test the appropriateness of classification, so as to provide some theoretical basis for uncovering the internal structure of disgust.Experiment 1, based on ERP, is launched by implicit task aiming to test the distinct of three kind of disgust. The words showed in this experiment contain three types of the disgust and the neutral. The task is to distinguish the words from pseudo words. From the recorded EEG, we find that, on the back scalp, pure disgust elicited larger P300 than the other two types of disgust; the neutral elicited larger P300 than quasi-anger disgust. On the frontal scalp, quasi-fear elicited the largest N400 of all types of disgust while pure disgust elicited larger N400 than quasi-anger disgust, and quasi-fear disgust elicited larger N400 than neutral. On the frontal-central scalp, quasi-anger elicited smaller LPC(650ms-750ms) than the other two types of disgust. On the back scalp, pure disgust elicited larger LPC than the other two types disgust and quasi-anger disgust elicited smaller LPC than neutral. In this experiment, we also rated the words had been used on the arousal and the valence. The results shows the arousal of three types disgust words is significantly higher than neutral words while the valence is significantly lower than neutral words. All results from experiment 1 shows the distinct time processing mechanism among three types disgust.Experiment 2 is a behavioral one, aiming to test the influence of three kind of disgust on subjects? attention. The experiment uses ”visual search task”, above threshold and sub-threshold respectively, to measure subjects? RT and then we can count the difference of the three types disgust on the basis of the difference subjects ?RT. We also divide the attention into 2 types: vigilance and difficulty of disengagement. The result is, on the condition of above threshold and sub-threshold, quasi-feat disgust?s vigilance RT is significantly faster than quasi-anger disgust?s. Also, on the condition of above threshold, we find quasi-anger disgust?s difficulty of disengagement is significantly slower than pure disgust. The result shows that three types of disgust cast a difference impact on human?s attention.Experiment 3 is a behavioral one, aiming to test the influence of three kind of disgust on subjects? memory. The experiment uses “visual search task” to show three types disgust words and neutral words. Then, after a 15 min interval or a 45 interval, subjects are asked to fulfill a questionnaire concerning the familiarity?s rating. The rating score reflects the memory?s level, so it can indicate the difference impact on human?s memory from three types disgust. The results is, at 15 min interval, all three types disgust words? memory?s level is significantly higher than neutral words?; quasi-anger disgust words? and pure disgust words? memory?s level is significantly higher than quasi-fear disgust words?. At 45 min interval, pure disgust words? memory?s level is significantly higher than quasi-anger disgust words? while quasi-anger disgust words? memory?s level is significantly higher than quasi-fear disgust words?, however there?s no significant difference between quasi-fear disgust words? memory?s level and neutral words?. The result shows, in the process of time lapsing, subjects show a strongest memory level on pure disgust, a medium memory level on quasi-anger disgust while a weakest memory level on quasi-fear disgust.From all three experiments we can find that three types disgust show the distinct difference both in time processing mechanism and attention and memory; also within the attention and memory experiment we can find some characteristics on each kind disgust. We conclude that disgust is not with a simple structure, so it is necessary to do a classification, also it can be something reasonable to divide disgust into 3 part: quasi-fear disgust, quasi-anger disgust, pure disgust. And it is necessary to point out which kind disgust is of interest in future studies.