Mental block

Our vulnerabilities to disease and death can provoke reactions of “Eww!”

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Believe it or not, there is a scale for measuring how sensitive you are to disgust. It was co-developed by Jonathan Haidt in the mid-2000s, before he became a pop-psych celebrity by taking his research into the political realm. The disgust scale asks people how much they agree with statements like "I might be willing to eat monkey meat under some circumstances" and "It would bother me to see a rat run across my path in a park", or how disgusting they find the thought of "a friend offers you a piece of chocolate shaped like dog poo" or "discovering an acquaintance drank from the glass you're sipping on".

If any of these made you go "Eww!" and scrunch up your nose (the universal sign you're experiencing the emotion of disgust), then you may wish to turn the page...

I'm thinking about disgust because my wife texted on Monday to say she was worried our "wastewater" pump wasn't a-pumping. I use quote marks because everything goes into that pump tank, not just water. So I headed home and spent almost an hour with my nose screwed up.