I was browsing twitter when I came to Diana Fleischman profile, opening her website I found
My research is mainly on menstrual cycle influences on psychology and the psychology of response to cues of disease, especially disgust.
I asked her for a link about what she is working on, and she sent me a 20 pages paper about gender differences when it comes to feeling disgust.
It was interesting to learn about disgust as a protector from pathogens that might hurt us. We feel disgusted by foods, or other things that we feel impacting our well being. This natural instinct serves as a protection mechanism just like the brain’s fight or flight response to potential attackers.
I didn’t know there is a “Disgust Scale” which measures how sensitive one might be to disgust. I also didn’t know women generally score higher on the disgust scale, and the attribution of this to factors such as the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and the higher susceptibility than males to sexual diseases due to the anatomy of the female sexual organs.