Overview

There is a powerful subconscious reaction that influences a disturbingly wide range of our daily behaviour - our eating habits, our relationships, our values. The very same reaction that makes us draw back, lip curled, when we step on dog dirt is also constantly at play in our lives. It is called disgust. Compared with love and fear, it has been given little attention. Yet a raft of studies show it influences what we wear, what we eat, what products we buy, who we desire, and how we vote. It underlies our attitudes to those perceived to be outside the norm: be it overweight, disfigured, or homosexual. It even guides our moral judgement. How and why did such a powerful emotion evolve? Why do people in widely differing cultures all exhibit disgust at the same things? Valerie Curtis presents a powerful theory based on recent experiments: that its origins lie in the avoidance of parasites. But in humans, with our complex social lives, it seems that the disgust response has spread much wider than its original health-promoting role. Understanding its evolutionary origins helps us both to counterbalance its harmful manifestations, such as sexism and xenophobia, and exploit it for good: Curtis is widely known for her work in promoting hygiene and health care programmes worldwide - work in which the harnessing of the potent disgust response pays great dividends.

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9780199579488

Table of Contents

Reviews

Thanks to the recent development of evolutionary psychology, scientists understand disgust, its function, and its mechanisms as never before. Moving with ease across disciplines and from theory to arresting concrete examples, Valerie Curtis shares in this highly readable book the findings and questions of this new science of disgust, to which she has been a main contributor. Dan Sperber Gross! Yuck! Ew! The psychology of disgust has turned into one of the hottest topics in the human sciences. It's tied in surprising ways to health, nutrition, sex, evolution, even religion and morality. Valerie Curtis, one of the deepest thinkers and cleverest researchers on this part of human nature, turns revulsion into fascination. Steven Pinker, Harvard University, and author of ow the Mind Works and he Better Angels of Our Nature

Thanks to the recent development of evolutionary psychology, scientists understand disgust, its function, and its mechanisms as never before. Moving with ease across disciplines and from theory to arresting concrete examples, Valerie Curtis shares in this highly readable book the findings and questions of this new science of disgust, to which she has been a main contributor. Dan Sperber, cognitive scientist at the Institut Jean Nicod, Paris and Central European University, Budapest Gross! Yuck! Ew! The psychology of disgust has turned into one of the hottest topics in the human sciences. It's tied in surprising ways to health, nutrition, sex, evolution, even religion and morality. Valerie Curtis, one of the deepest thinkers and cleverest researchers on this part of human nature, turns revulsion into fascination. Steven Pinker, Harvard University, and author of ow the Mind Works and he Better Angels of Our Nature

Gross! Yuck! Ew! The psychology of disgust has turned into one of the hottest topics in the human sciences. It's tied in surprising ways to health, nutrition, sex, evolution, even religion and morality. Valerie Curtis, one of the deepest thinkers and cleverest researchers on this part of human nature, turns revulsion into fascination. * Steven Pinker, Harvard University, and author of How the Mind Works and The Better Angels of Our Nature * Thanks to the recent development of evolutionary psychology, scientists understand disgust, its function, and its mechanisms as never before. Moving with ease across disciplines and from theory to arresting concrete examples, Valerie Curtis shares in this highly readable book the findings and questions of this new science of disgust, to which she has been a main contributor. * Dan Sperber, cognitive scientist at the Institut Jean Nicod, Paris and Central European University, Budapest * ...for a book riddled with rancid and revolting things, Don't Look, Don't Touch is suprisingly difficult to put down. * Nicola K.S.Davis, TLS *

Author Information

Valerie Curtis is an anthropologist and Director of the Hygiene Centre at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In 2002 she founded a global public-private partnership involving Unicef, the World Bank, Proctor and Gamble to promote handwashing. She is the author of a number of important research papers and has written for a range of magazines, newspapers, and journals, including New Scientist and The Economist. She regularly appears on television and radio.

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