Cardiovascular regulation pattern of contamination-related disgust: Consistency and context dependence

Abstract

The cardiovascular response to contamination-related disgust was proposed to be under parasympathetic or parasympathetic-sympathetic cardiac control. However, findings of physiological disgust responses are inconsistent, possibly due to effects of the emotion induction context and single cardiovascular changes being part of larger cardiovascular regulation patterns. Therefore, we induced an emotionally neutral state and core and contamination disgust in female participants in two induction contexts (auditory script, film clip). Dependent variables were emotion self-reports and 10 cardiovascular factors derived from 23 cardiovascular variables. We found elevated disgust ratings in both induction contexts. On the cardiovascular level, we observed consistent increases in a factor indicating vagal cardiac control in both contexts and changes in factors indicating sympathetic activation that were bound to the respective context. These findings support the notion of a parasympathetic dominance of the contamination-related disgust response and underpin the importance of incorporating the induction context in the study of cardiovascular responses to disgust.

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