In every case, the more disgust-inducing a story was, the more widely it spread across the internet. To illustrate the point, Kelly pointed to a 2001 study from researchers at Stanford University that tracked the spread of several urban legends across various websites. "Because if they get it, and they're part of my cohort, I might pick it up from them." "If there's a contaminating illness in the environment, it's in my interest to not catch it, but it's also in my interest to let people know," Kelly said. If disgust is a reaction to something that could make you sick, then sharing the cause of that disgust becomes a valuable way of communicating potential dangers in your environment. There's likely a biological explanation for this, too, Kelly said. Disgusting loves companyīecause of these potential health risks, a strange phenomenon occurs when people acknowledge that something is disgusting: They want to share it. "They're indicators that something is wrong," and you may find them disgusting because you want to stay away. "Massive pimples are a phenotypic abnormality," Kelly said, meaning they're not a common trait. This is one reason why people take notice of pimple-popping footage so readily - it's in a person's nature to be on the lookout for things that could make them sick, and gargantuan, pus-filled cysts fit the bill. One particularly reliable trigger is bodily fluids, which are "fairly potent disease vectors," Kelly said. ![]() In virtue of these directives, Kelly said, it's very easy to get distracted by something that triggers your disgust response. And part of the reason that's disgusting is that there's an observable, reliable indicator that that person is sick with something you don't want to catch. "If you see someone else and they're sneezing and there's snot running down their nose, that's disgusting. "You can think of it as being part of your behavioral immune system," he said. ![]() The second directive is to keep us from getting sick in other ways, Kelly said. Anything that might be disruptive to your gastrointestinal system is probably going to disgust you." "One is to protect us from eating stuff that will poison us. "My take is that there two prime directives of disgust," Kelly told Live Science.
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