Is it disgusting? (May-08)

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People vary in their attitudes toward physical disabilities. Give us your reactions, and we'll tell you the results of surveys of the general public--and of actual patients.

 

Strongly

disagree

Mildly

disagree

Mildly

agree

Strongly

agree

I try to avoid letting any part of my body touch the toilet seat in a public restroom, even when it appears clean.

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It would make me uncomfortable to hear a couple making love in the next room of a hotel.

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It would bother me tremendously to touch a dead body.

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Even if I were hungry, I would not eat a bowl of my favorite soup if it had been stirred by a used-but thoroughly washed- fly-swatter

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I am bothered by the odor caused by passing gas.

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The smell of other persons' bowel movements disgusts me.

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Consider the following

Now we'd like you to think about a specific health condition. Please read this scenario carefully so that you can answer some questions. Imagine you have a colostomy. A colostomy is an operation involving the surgical redirection of your bowels through a hole created in your gut. This hole is called a stoma. Waste passes through your intestines and out the stoma into a bag, which you must empty several times a day. If you wear relatively loose clothing, this bag won't be visible underneath your garments. Occasionally, you'll experience odors and noises caused by gas and waste passing through the stoma into the bag. There's also the chance that the colostomy bag may leak if it's allowed to fill past capacity. Although you'll be restricted from lifting very heavy objects, your daily activities won't otherwise be greatly affected by the colostomy.

To what extent does your colostomy make you feel embarrassed or socially uncomfortable?
Not at all 1       2       3       4       5       6       7       8       9        10 Very Much
 
To what extent does your colostomy make you feel stigmatized?
Not at all 1       2       3       4       5       6       7       8       9        10 Very Much
 

How do your answers compare?

Do your responses to the six questions on the disgust scale correlate with the stigmatization you expressed related to your imaginary colostomy?

In their national survey of the general public (people without colostomies), CBDSM researchers found that people who reported a higher level of disgust sensitivity responded more negatively to colostomy.

Current and former colostomy patients were also surveyed. In these groups, patients with higher disgust sensitivity had more difficulty adjusting to life with a colostomy. Specifically,colostomy patients with higher disgust sensitivity felt more stigmatized in society by their colostomy and felt more bothered by colostomy symptoms, such as leakage. Dr. Dylan Smith and his colleagues postulate that people who have a pre-existing high sensitivity to disgusting stimuli will be less likely to adjust well to life with a colostomy. Alternatively, it could be that people who adjust successfully to a colostomy do so in part by reducing their sensitivity to certain kinds of disgusting stimuli.

If future studies show that we can predict that patients with high disgust sensitivity are likely to have more difficulty adjusting to a colostomy, health-care teams can then seek ways to de-sensitize responses to bowel functioning, in order to aid patients in their adaptation to life with a colostomy. Further, many people with inflammatory bowel syndrome can choose whether or not to have a colostomy for relief of their symptoms. For these patients, a clear understanding of disgust sensitivity could be a factor in helping to make an informed choice about elective colostomy.

Certainly this research suggests that disgust plays a role in perceived and actual stigmatization of disabled patients. Previous studies of patients' adjustment to disability have focused on general responses to adversity, taking into account their social support, their coping style, or their optimism, for example. The uniqueness of this recent CBDSM study is that it considers how the specific challenges of a disability interact with a personality trait relevant to that disability: disgust sensitivity. This personality trait might also be linked to other health conditions, such as amputation or incontinence. In addition, personality traits other than disgust might affect patients' adaptation to other disabilities.

Read the article:

Sensitivity to disgust, stigma, and adjustment to life with a colostomy
Smith DM, Loewenstein G, Rozin P, Sherriff RL, Ubel PA. Journal of Research in Personality 2007;41(4):787–803.

The Disgust Scale used here is adapted from the work of Haidt J, McCauley C, Rozin P. Individual differences in sensitivity to disgust: A scale sampling seven domains of disgust elicitors. Personality and Individual Differences. 1994; 16(5): 701-713.