Neville Longbottom x Severus snape smut

Eight part

Although disgust was first thought to be a motivation for humans to only physical contaminants, it has since been applied to moral and social moral contaminants as well. The similarities between these types of disgust can especially be seen in the way people react to the contaminants. For example, if someone stumbles upon a pool of vomit, they will do whatever possible to place as much distance between themselves and the vomit as possible, which can include pinching the nose, closing the eyes, or running away. Likewise, when a group experiences someone who cheats, rapes, or murders another member of the group, its reaction is to shun or expel that person from the group.[67]

Arguably, there is a completely different construct of the emotion of disgust from the core disgust that can be seen in Ekman's basic emotions. Socio-moral disgust occurs when social or moral boundaries appear to be violated, the socio-moral aspect centers on human violations of the autonomy and dignity of others (e.g., racism, hypocrisy, disloyalty).[68] Socio-moral disgust is different from core disgust. In the 2006 study done by Simpson and colleagues, there was a divergence found in disgust responses between the core elicitors of disgust and the socio-moral elicitors of disgust, suggesting that the makeup of core and socio-moral disgust may be different emotional constructs.[68]

Studies have found that disgust has been known to predict prejudice and discrimination.[69][70] Through passive viewing tasks and functional magnetic resonance researchers were able to provide direct evidence that the insula is largely involved in racially biased perception of facial disgust through two distinct neural pathways: amygdala and insula, both areas of the brain that deal with emotion processing.[68] It was found that racial prejudice elicited disgusted facial expressions. Disgust can also predict prejudice and discrimination towards individuals with obesity.[70] Vertanian, Trewartha and Vanman (2016) showed participants photos of obese targets and non-obese targets performing everyday activities. They found that, compared to non-obese people, obese targets elicited more disgust, more negative attitudes and stereotypes, and a greater desire for a social distance from participants.

Jones & Fitness (2008)[67] coined the term "moral hypervigilance" to describe the phenomenon that individuals who are prone to physical disgust are also prone to moral disgust. The link between physical disgust and moral disgust can be seen in the United States where criminals are often referred to as "slime" or "scum" and criminal activity as "stinking" or being "fishy". Furthermore, people often try to block out the stimuli of morally repulsive images in much the same way that they would block out the stimuli of a physically repulsive image. When people see an image of abuse, rape, or murder, they often avert their gazes to inhibit the incoming visual stimuli from the photograph just like they would if they saw a decomposing body.

Moral judgments can be traditionally defined or thought of as directed by standards such as impartiality and respect towards others for their well-being. From more recent theoretical and empirical information, it can be suggested that morality may be guided by basic affective processes. Jonathan Haidt proposed that one's instant judgments about morality are experienced as a "flash of intuition" and that these affective perceptions operate rapidly, associatively, and outside of consciousness.[71] From this, moral intuitions are believed to be stimulated prior to conscious moral cognitions which correlates with having a greater influence on moral judgments.[71]

Research suggests that the experience of disgust can alter moral judgments. Many studies have focused on the average change in behavior across participants, with some studies indicating disgust stimuli intensifies the severity of moral judgments.[72] Later studies found the reverse effect,[73] and some studies have suggested that the average effect of disgust on moral judgments is small or absent.[74][75][76] Potentially reconciling these effects, one study indicated that the direction and size of the effect of disgust stimuli on moral judgment depends upon an individual's sensitivity to disgust.[77]

The effect also seems to be limited to a certain aspect of morality. Horberg et al. found that disgust plays a role in the development and intensification of moral judgments of purity in particular.[78] In other words, the feeling of disgust is often associated with a feeling that some image of what is pure has been violated. For example, a vegetarian might feel disgust after seeing another person eating meat because he/she has a view of vegetarianism as the pure state-of-being. When this state-of-being is violated, the vegetarian feels disgust. Furthermore, disgust appears to be uniquely associated with purity judgments, not with what is just/unjust or what is harmful/caregiving, while other emotions such as fear, anger, and sadness are "unrelated to moral judgments of purity".[79]

Some other research suggests that an individual's level of disgust sensitivity is due to their particular experience of disgust.[71] One's disgust sensitivity can be either high or low. The higher one's disgust sensitivity is, the greater the tendency to make stricter moral judgments.[71] Disgust sensitivity can also relate to various aspects of moral values, which can have a negative or positive impact. For example, Disgust sensitivity is associated with moral hypervigilance, which means people who have higher disgust sensitivity are more likely to think that other people who are suspects of a crime are more guilty. They also associate them as being morally evil and criminal, thus endorsing them to harsher punishment in the setting of a court.

Disgust is also theorized as an evaluative emotion that can control moral behavior.[71] When one experiences disgust, this emotion might signal that certain behaviors, objects, or people are to be avoided in order to preserve their purity. Research has established that when the idea or concept of cleanliness is made salient then people make less severe moral judgments of others.[71] From this particular finding, it can be suggested that this reduces the experience of disgust and the ensuing threat of psychological impurity diminishes the apparent severity of moral transgressions.[80]

Political orientation
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In one study, people of differing political persuasions were shown disgusting images in a brain scanner. In conservatives, the basal ganglia and amygdala and several other regions showed increased activity, while in liberals other regions of the brain increased in activity. Both groups reported similar conscious reactions to the images. The difference in activity patterns was large: the reaction to a single image could predict a person's political leanings with 95% accuracy.[81][82] Later, however, such results have been proven to be mixed, with failed replications and questions about what is actually being measured also raising questions about the generalizability of the findings.[83]

Self-disgust
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Although limited research has been done on self-disgust, one study found that self-disgust and severity of moral judgments were negatively correlated.[84] This is in contrast to findings related to disgust, which typically results in harsher judgments of transgressions. This implies that disgust directed towards the self functions very differently from disgust directed towards other people or objects.[84] Self-disgust "may reflect a pervasive condition of self-loathing that makes it difficult to assign deserving punishment to others".[84] In other words, those who feel self-disgust cannot easily condemn others to punishment because they feel that they may also be deserving of punishment. The concept of self-disgust has been implicated in several mental health conditions, including depression,[85] obsessive-compulsive disorder[86] and eating disorders.[87]