How often have you thought of disgust as an issue you are likely to face in culture shock? I'll bet that even if you haven't thought of it in those terms, you have still thought of it!
"What's the grossest thing you've ever eaten?!" Rapt audiences of kids would ask teenage me at the churches we spoke at on furlough. I would, of course, gleefully tell them "raw sea slug."
My mom told a story in one of her messages that featured mice crawling across the floor of a hut we were staying in, and being afraid they would crawl across my little brother as he slept on the floor, but being too afraid to reach out and check on him. That story always got both groans and laughter.
We all know that when a certain food is referred to as a "delicacy," that is a good sign we probably don't want to try it.
In all of these stories, it something becomes quite obvious: different cultures have different "disgust" triggers. What is disgusting in one culture is a "delicacy" in another. And, as TCKs, we navigate these differences in "disgust" just as we have to navigate any cultural difference -- different ways we show respect, different levels of "modesty," different things meaning "wealthy," different languages. But what do differences in "disgust" mean for us?
Well, first, it is helpful to know what disgust is. Disgust is a little different from a lot of other cultural differences because it is a rather violent, involuntary reaction. What one culture relishes, another might actually physically throw up at. Why is disgust so "gut-deep"? Because disgust developed as a way to keep us safe from foods or substances that might harm us. We have this violent, involuntary reaction that leads us to squint our eyes (minimizing the risk of anything getting in them), wrinkling our noses (keeping from inhaling anything), turning down the corners of our mouth (increasing the chances of anything already in our mouth running out), and pushing out our tongues (pushing out whatever might be in our mouth). Go ahead. Make the face. See? In extreme cases, we may even begin to gag or vomit, expelling anything that might have reached our stomach! Things that commonly cause disgust are generally things that could cause us to get sick, like rotting food, or vomit. So, disgust is a (generally) involutary reaction to something that (generally) could make us sick.
So why does it vary from culture to culture? Well, one explanation is that different things cause illness in different places! Fore example, Dr. Davey of Psychology Today (2014) hypothesized that we are disgusted by spiders in European cultures because during the Black Plague in Europe, spiders lived in the same areas as, and resembled, rats, which were the carriers of the illness. Disgust reactions might be passed on genetically, or through intense "social learning" where members of one society all learn to exhibit disgust toward the same thing (think about toddlers, who seem to have no aversion to poop until they are taught that it is disgusting). Because of this, Europeans and their descendants show a disgust aversion to spiders, which many other parts of the world eat them! In the interest of full disclosure, I must confess to never having succumbed to eating a spider, even though I did live in Papua New Guinea, where such creatures are savored. My brother did, I did not, and I decided that I am ok with that. I guess the Black Plague still looms too big in my subconscious mind.
Continuing this line of thought, we are generally somewhat wary of "fermented" food because "fermented" is awefully close to "spoiled." We are usually ok with ferments that we are familiar with (think yoghurt and cheese) and disgusted by or at least wary of ferments we are not (the fermented sea slug innards of Samoa comes to mind). Kombucha, a fermented tea that traditionally has not been consumed in European/ American cultures, is just beginning to gain popularity in America, and most people I have met are somewhat inconclusive in whether or not they are disgusted by it.
But what about things that don't make us sick? The BBC Science article "Total Recoil" (2014) says,
At the end of the 1990s, Dr Valerie Curtis of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine began to survey people in different countries to find out what things they found disgusting. Curtis uncovered some interesting cultural peculiarities. For example, food cooked by a menstruating woman was a frequent cause of disgust in India. While fat people scored highly as disgusting in the Netherlands.
So what do we make of these things? Well, there is more to disgust than simply keeping us physically healthy. Somewhere along the way, society caught on to how strong a motivator disgust could be, and began to use it to motivate other socially or religiously desirable behaviors. For example, how we treat sacred object is closely related to how we would treat an object we were trying not to contaminate with a pathogen: We wash up before church, we don't put things on top of Bibles, etc. Dr. McCauly (2013) explains,
"Cuing people’s contamination avoidance system instantly provides them with default inferences about how they must conduct themselves around those places and objects. They instantly understand that the critical forces can be invisible – just like cooties -- and that they must be careful about what they touch and where they go. "
And it does not just apply to objects: people who violate these social and religious rules are also disgusting. This falls in line with the idea of "persistance," where something that is disgusting mysteriously has the power to also make anything that comes in contact with it disgusting. Consider this thought experiment from D'Amato (1998)
"Imagine three glasses of tap water. You are told that the water in the first glass contains an odorless, harmless chemical that is terribly bitter to the taste. The second glass is laced with a lethal dose of arsenic. The third glass, perfectly sterile and containing pure water, previously held a sample of dog feces but had been washed thoroughly. Which glass would you drink? This taste test... suggests that disgust is about something much bigger than unpleasant tastes, smells, or sights."
Just as the glass which had at one point contained something disgusting was still somewhat disgusting, so too are people who have done something disgusting. Dr. Curtis (2014) explains that this is how society imposes the necessity of manners: to do something unmannerly -- eating with your fingers in North America, for example -- is "disgusting," and if you do something "disgusting," then you are, also, "disgusting."
And there we have the reason that this issue is so big for TCKs. When we violate a given societies "rules of disgust," we run the risk of becoming "disgusting" ourselves.
The two different kinds of disgust -- let's call them "physical" and "societal" -- both are triggered by different things from culture to culture. Spiders in America, but not Papua New Guinea. Allowing your skirt to brush over food at the market in Papua New Guinea, but in America. And we don't always know what will be disgusting in any given culture. We are all familiar with social faux pas: being awkward and uncomfortable when we do something that is not culturally appropriate. We try to learn all the social rules as early as possible. But the problem with a lot of these disgust reactions is that no-one stops to think of them being different in different places because, while we know that people eat different things --- surely some things are disgusting everywhere, right?!
This came to my attention while I was working as a housekeeper at a camp ground here in the States. I would clean rooms, clean bathrooms, and never would think about it being "disgusting." ... I mean, the rooms were quite clean! Nothing disgusting there. But then another housekeeper would come behind me and would be horrified that I had missed a hair in the shower. A HAIR. .... In my mind, we all have hair, it is not disgusting. In fact, in Fiji, a person's hair and head are sacred and you NEVER touch someone else's head without permission. Because hair is not disgusting to me, it didn't trigger any reaction and was rather easy for me to miss when cleaning a room. But to the other housekeeper, it was disgusting, and therefore much easier to spot and much more traumatizing if missed.
This experience got me thinking about how often I consciously attempt to regulate my responses to things that might be disgusting to match the culture I am in, rather than my actual response. I don't even know anymore if I am disgusted by mice! But I must show the proper disgust toward the proper things, or risk being thought of as "disgusting" myself! As a result, I am constantly over- or -under- "disgusted." .... Whoops, I guess hair is disgusting. Note to self: show more disgust. So I try to react appropriately the next time: "EEW A MOUSE!" And get asked, "Why are you so girly? It's just a mouse!" Note to self: mice are not disgusting to these people. Right.
Again, you might ask: why is this a big deal? We all know that we all make social mistakes. This is just one more of them. Well, that is true, yes. However, disgust, especially of the "physical" type, is a little different than other social rules becuase of the intensity and illogical-ness of the reactions it can cause. Disgust makes us act in ways we KNOW don't make any sense, such as not wanting to drink out of the (perfectly clean) dog-doo-containing cup. For example, in 2014, a man was caught on camera in Portland, OR, peeing into a open-air water reservoir which had already been filtered and treated and was destined for people's taps. Note: this was an open-air reservoir. Lots of things pee, poop, swim, and dip their toes into and open-air reservoir. But because this man was caught on camera, and the people of Portland saw pee going into their drinking water... the entire 38 million gallons of water was drained and thrown away. (Ropeik, 2014) How crazy is that?!
Disgust can provoke very powerful, subconcious reactions. And when we accidentally violate its rules ... we can easily become the brunt of those reactions.
What can I do about it?! ... Good question, thoughtful reader! One which I will address in the next (hopefully far shorter) blog post.
Resources:
Author Unknown (2014). Total Recoil. BBC Science. Retrieved from <http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/articles/emotions/disgust.shtml>
Curtis, V.A., PhD. (2014) Disgust Has Us In Its Grip. Psychology Today. Retrieved from <https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/dont-look-dont-touch/201401/disgust-has-us-in-its-grip>
D'Amato, E. (1998) Mystery of Disgust. Psychology Today. Retrieved from <https://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200909/mystery-disgust>
Davey, G.C.L., PhD. (2014) Why Are We Afraid of Spiders? Psychology Today. Retrieved from <https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/why-we-worry/201407/why-are-we-afraid-spiders>
McCauly, R. N., PhD. (2013) Contamination, Disgust, and the Sacred. Psychology Today. Retrieved from <https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/why-religion-is-natural-and-science-is-not/201307/contamination-disgust-and-the-sacred>
Ropeik, D. (2014) The Great Portland Pee. Psychology Today. Retrieved from <https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/how-risky-is-it-really/201404/the-great-portland-pee-the-psychological-power-disgust>