Blood phobia and disgust

Disgust sensitivity is a common feature in people with phobias.  Put simply it means that people with blood phobia will have a heightened sensitivity to things that disgust us all.  Things that one person finds a little unpleasant may be intolerable for a person with a disgust sensitivity.   It is not clear if this disgust sensitivity appears before the phobia starts to appear or happens because the person has developed the phobia.

Disgust is something the brain interprets.  We may have a developed a disgust rule because we have learned that some things are full of germs.

In a relatively small experiment in Germany the researchers tested approximately 20 people with a blood injection phobia and a similar number of those without the phobia.  The control group were mostly recruited from with the university campus and the phobic group were recruited via a newspaper advertisement.  They were exposed to various disgusting pictures and muscle tension was used as an objective measure of response.

Key message:

People with a blood phobia are likely to be more disgust sensitive.  This is research is consistent with other phobia results.

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