Long-term disgust habituation with limited generalisation in care home workers

被引:0
|
作者
Edgar, Charlotte [1 ]
Chan, Faye [1 ]
Armstrong, Thomas [2 ]
Dalmaijer, Edwin S. [1 ]
机构
[1] Univ Bristol, Sch Psychol Sci, Bristol, England
[2] Whitman Coll, Dept Psychol, Walla Walla, WA USA
来源
PLOS ONE | 2024年 / 19卷 / 04期
关键词
INDIVIDUAL-DIFFERENCES; SENSITIVITY; ELICITORS; DOMAINS; TESTS; SCALE;
D O I
10.1371/journal.pone.0299429
中图分类号
O [数理科学和化学]; P [天文学、地球科学]; Q [生物科学]; N [自然科学总论];
学科分类号
07 ; 0710 ; 09 ;
摘要
Countless workers handle bodily effluvia and body envelope violations every working day, and consequentially face deeply unpleasant levels of disgust. Understanding if and how they adapt can help inform policies to improve worker satisfaction and reduce staff turnover. So far, limited evidence exist that self-reported disgust is reduced (or lower to begin with) among those employed in high-disgust environments. However, it is unclear if this is due to demand effects or translates into real behavioural changes. Here, we tested healthcare assistants (N = 32) employed in UK care homes and a control sample (N = 50). We replicated reduced self-reported pathogen disgust sensitivity in healthcare workers compared to controls. We also found it negatively correlated with career duration, suggesting long-term habituation. Furthermore, we found that healthcare assistants showed no behavioural disgust avoidance on a web-based preferential looking task (equivalent to eye tracking). Surprisingly, this extended to disgust elicitors found outside care homes, suggesting generalisation of disgust habituation. While we found no difference between bodily effluvia (core disgust) and body envelope violations (gore disgust), generalisation did not extend to other domains: self-reported sexual and moral disgust sensitivity were not different between healthcare assistants and the control group, nor was there a correlation with career duration. In sum, our work confirms that people in high-frequency disgust employment are less sensitive to pathogen disgust. Crucially, we provide preliminary evidence that this is due to a process of long-term habituation with generalisation to disgust-elicitors within the pathogen domain, but not beyond it.
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页数:16
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