Criteria for basic emotions: Is DISGUST a primary “emotion”?

Abstract

Tornochuk and Ellis argue that DISGUST should be considered a basic emotional system, on a par with the other basic emotional systems such as SEEKING, FEAR, RAGE, LUST, CARE, PANIC and PLAY, which constitute the groundwork for a cross-species emotion neuroscience with immediate implications for understanding emotional imbalances that characterise psychiatric disorders. Disgust is clearly a basic sensory/interoceptive affect (Rozin & Fallon, 1987), and a socially constructed moral emotion (Haidt, 2003a, b), but perhaps it is a category error to classify disgust as a basic emotion. It is more akin to a sensory affect. If we consider sensory disgust to be a basic emotional systems, then why not include hunger, thirst, fatigue and many other affective states of the body as emotions?

Notes

¹I have long advocated the position that basic emotional systems could be defined in terms of fairly straightforward neuropsychological criteria (Panksepp, 1982, 1992), and should include, at minimum, seven attributes: (1) They should be accessed by certain unconditional environmental stimuli. (2) They should generate a coherent set of behavioural actions and supportive physiological responses. (3) They should be able to gate inputs from the environment. (4) They should be capable of sustaining emotive activity for a substantial period after the precipitating events have passed. (5) Emotional responses should be capable of being triggered by cognitive activities. (6) Emotions should be capable of activating and regulating complex cognitive strategies. And (7) psychiatrically relevant affective experience must be generated by such brain systems. Emotional affects reflect the dynamic operations of such complex brain systems. In my estimation, sensory disgust does not really come sufficiently close to fulfilling the following six criteria. (1) Disgust easily fulfils this criterion. (2) Disgust seems to be more of a fairly discrete sensory reflex rather than generating a complex and dynamic behavioural/bodily response (the behavioural flexibility that T&E discuss largely reflects learning). (3) I am not sure there is much evidence for a perceptual gating function. (4) Disgust seems to be largely stimulus bound as opposed to generating a sustained response that can long outlast precipitating circumstances. (5) To my knowledge, it is not common for feelings of sensory disgust to be evoked by cognitive activities, even though social disgust is typically generated in this way. (6) This criterion is well fulfilled for disgust/distaste because animals and humans exhibit cognitive strategies to avoid such experiences.