ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a limited survey of how disgust is currently understood in psychological research and in the humanities literature. The aim is not to define disgust conclusively, but to indicate some of the general themes that have arisen across disgust research. This is intended to situate the reader in the field of disgust studies. This chapter begins by examining research in psychology that constitutes some of the earliest disgust research; it thereby gives a sense of how conceptualizations of disgust have developed and changed over time. Following this, the chapter turns to a thematic analysis that incorporates research from both psychology and the humanities. Rather than examining existing disgust research along strict disciplinary distinctions, the discussion works through prominent themes, such as the presence of threat, fascination, and disgust’s moral and ethical stakes. This chapter highlights that much of the current research is unable to address pressing questions in disgust—disgust’s relevance to processes of selfhood, world-making, and ethics.
