DOI: 10.5061/dryad.70rxwdc4m
title: Data from: Differential involvement of the senses in disgust memories

description: One prediction derived from the disease avoidance account of disgust is
 that proximal disgust cues (smells, tastes, touches), should elicit this
 emotion more intensely than distal disgust cues (sights, sounds). If
 correct, then memories of disgusting experiences should involve smelling,
 tasting or touching to a greater degree, than seeing or hearing. Two
 surveys were conducted on university students to test this idea, drawing
 upon their naturalistic experiences. Survey one (N = 127) asked
 participants to detail their most memorable disgusting, fear-provoking,
 morally-repulsive, and yucky/gross experience, with each recollection
 self-rated for sensory involvement. Survey two (N = 89) employed the same
 task, but this time participants recollected their most common disgusting,
 fear-provoking, morally-repulsive, and yucky/gross experience in the
 preceding week. For core disgusts, the proximal and distal sensory cues
 contributed equally for most memorable disgust experiences, but proximal
 exceeded distal for most common. When the same comparison was made for
 core disgusts, relative to moral disgusts and fear-provoking experiences,
 the proximal sensory cues contributed more to core disgusts. The
 implications of these findings for a disease avoidance account of disgust,
 for multisensory disgust research, and core disgust’s classification as an
 emotion or a drive, are discussed.
description: Data was collected on Qualtrics, and analysed via SPSS and R (for
 graphical purposes only). Only deidentifiable data is uploaded.
description: # Differential involvement of the senses in disgust memories
 This survey examines which
 senses are most involved in participants' most memorable (across
 their lives) and most-common (in their past week), disgusting,
 yucky/gross, fearful and morally repulsive experiences. We had two main
 aims: (1) Core disgust experiences (disgust, and yucky/gross) will have
 more involvement of proximal senses (smell, taste, passive touch, active
 touch) compared to the distal senses (sound, sight). **To achieve this aim
 we compare whether any proximal sense was involved more than any distal
 sense (i.e., maximum distal vs. maximum proximal).** (2) Core disgust
 experiences (disgust, and yucky/gross) will have more involvement of
 proximal vs distal sensory involvement, relative to other forms of disgust
 and emotions (morally repulsive and fear**). To test this we compare the
 difference in proximal and distal sensory involvement (proximal sensory
 minus distal sensory), across the different affective states (disgust,
 yucky/gross, fear, morally repulsive)** ## Description of the data and
 file structure All datafiles attached are excel documents. They contain 2
 sheets, the first provides a variable key, and the second the dataset for
 analyses. All data are deindentified. Analyses pertaining to Aim 1 and Aim
 2 (outlined above) are detailed below **AIM 1: Are the proximal senses
 more involved in core disgust experiences, relative to the distal
 senses?** * ***Aim 1 Analysis Survey 1 (most memorable)*** \&gt; To assess
 aim 1 in survey 1, the data set titled "*Dryad_Survey_One*"
 needs to be opened \&gt; Wilcoxon tests then need to be run (i.e., paired
 sample t-tests, non parametric), to compare the involvement of the maximum
 distal sense to the maximum proximal \&gt; The variables to be compared
 are 'DisEvMaxDistal' vs. 'DisEvMaxProximal' * ***Aim 1
 Analysis Survey 2 (most common experiences)*** \&gt; To assess aim 1 in
 survey 2, the data set titled "*Dryad Survey2_Aim1Aim2*" needs
 to be opened \&gt; Wilcoxon tests then need to be run (i.e., paired sample
 t-tests, non parametric), to compare the involvement of the maximum distal
 sense to the maximum proximal \&gt; The variables to be compared are
 'DisgustMaxDistal' vs. 'DisgustMaxProx' **AIM 2: Is
 the difference between Proximal and Distal sensory involvement, greater
 for core disgust experiences, than moral disgust and fear experiences?** *
 ***Aim 2 Analysis Survey 1 (most memorable)*** \&gt; To assess aim 2 in
 survey 1 data, the data set titled "*Dryad_Survey_One*" needs to
 be opened \&gt; A Friedman test (non parametric one way repeated measures
 ANOVA ) needs to be run on the proximal minus distal sensory scores. The
 variables to be compared in a Friedman's test are
 'DisEvMaxDiffs' ; 'ScaEvMaxDiffs';
 'YukEvMaxDiffs'; 'MorEvMaxDiffs' \&gt; Wilcoxon tests
 then need to be run (i.e., paired sample t-tests, non parametric), to
 compare the difference scores between each emotion. The variables to be
 compared in a Wilcoxon's test are the same as above
 ('DisEvMaxDiffs' ; 'ScaEvMaxDiffs';
 'YukEvMaxDiffs'; 'MorEvMaxDiffs') * ***Aim 2 Analysis
 Survey 2 (most common experiences)*** * \&gt; To assess aim 2 in survey 2
 data, the data set titled "*Dryad Survey2_Aim1Aim2*" needs to be
 opened \&gt; A Friedman test (non parametric one way repeated measures
 ANOVA ) needs to be run on the proximal minus distal sensory scores. The
 variables to be compared in a Friedman's test are
 'DisgustProxMinusDistal' ; 'YuckyProximalMinusDistal'
 ; 'ScaryProximalMinusDistal' ; 'MRproximalMinusDistal'
 \&gt; Wilcoxon tests then need to be run (i.e., paired sample t-tests, non
 parametric), to compare the difference scores between each emotion. The
 variables to be compared in a Wilcoxon's test are the same as above
 ('DisgustProxMinusDistal' ; 'YuckyProximalMinusDistal'
 ; 'ScaryProximalMinusDistal' ;
 'MRproximalMinusDistal') **Extra Analyses** **General
 Descriptives** * Additional variables ( Age, Age during experiences
 (survey 1), intensity of experiences and frequency (survey 2) are provided
 in the attached datasetS (*Dryad_Survey_One, Dryad Survey2_Aim1Aim2)* , so
 the reader can get descriptive means and SDs. **Human coder data
 Descriptives** * Survey 1 Reliability data (agreement) on the format of
 the most memorable experiences can be found in the
 *"FormatExperienceAgreementSurvey1R"* and
 *"CoreMoralDisgust_HumanCoderReliabilityS1*" - descriptives
 (frequency) data was generated from these, with variable keys provided in
 the files. * Survey 2 Reliability data (agreement) on the format of the
 most memorable experiences can be found in the
 *"FormatExperienceAgreementSurvey2R*" and
 *"CoreMoralDisgust_HumanCoderReliabilityS2" -* descriptives
 (frequency) data was generated from these, with variable keys provided in
 the files. **Sample Size Justification**   In order to calculate sample
 size needed to get an 80% chance of seeing an effect, the formula (N =
 [2.8/cohens d]<sup>2</sup>) was used (Howell, 2007). Based off
 effect sizes seen in past disgust-survey studies (with cohens d’s ranging
 between .27 to .40; see Rozin, 2008; Boggs et al., 2020) a sample of
 around 107 students was required. As such, to cater for participant drop
 out, we recruit 127 participants in survey 1, with 90 of these
 participants proceeding to survey 2. **References** Howell, D. C. (2007).
 Statistical methods for psychology (6th ed.). Belmont, California: Duxbury
 Press. Rozin, P. (2008). Hedonic “adaptation”: Specific habituation to
 disgust/death elicitors as a result of dissecting a cadaver. *Judgment and
 Decision Making,* *3*(2), 191-194. doi:10.1017/S1930297500001534 Boggs, S.
 T., Ruisch, B. C., & Fazio, R. H. (2022). Concern about salient
 pathogen threats increases sensitivity to disgust. *Personality and
 Individual Differences*, *186*, 111348.
 [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.111348](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.111348 "Persistent link using digital object identifier") ## Sharing/Access information Data was derived from a qualtric's survey, that recieved ethical vetting. Only deidentifiable data are included. ## Code/Software **Graphs** The dataset used to make figure 1 is titled "EmotionDifferenceProximalDataRGraph" and the R code used to generate it , is provided below: read.table("EmotionDifferenceProximalDataRGraph.csv", sep = ",", header = TRUE, stringsAsFactors = FALSE) data4 &lt;- read.csv("EmotionDifferenceProximalDataRGraph.csv") y3 &lt;- ggbarplot(data4, x = "Emotion", y = "Mean", fill = "Survey", position = position_dodge(0.8)) + labs(fill = "Disgust Experience:", x="Emotion", y = "Proximal minus Distal Involvement (-100 to 100)") + theme(axis.title.x = element_text(size = 18, vjust = -2, face="bold"), axis.text = element_text(size = 18, face="bold"), axis.title.y = element_text(size = 19, vjust = 4, face="bold"), legend.title = element_text(size = 18, face="bold"), plot.margin = margin(.7, .7, .7, .7, "cm"), legend.text=element_text(size=18, face="bold"))+ ylim(-70,50) z3 &lt;- y3 + geom_errorbar(aes(group = Survey, ymax = Mean-SE, ymin = Mean+SE), position = position_dodge(width = .8), width = 0.25) z3 z3 &lt;- z3 + scale_fill_manual(values=c("#999999","#FFFFFF"), labels = c("Most Memorable", "Most Common")) z3