Criteria for basic emotions: Is DISGUST a primary “emotion”?

Abstract

Tornochuk and Ellis argue that DISGUST should be considered a basic emotional system, on a par with the other basic emotional systems such as SEEKING, FEAR, RAGE, LUST, CARE, PANIC and PLAY, which constitute the groundwork for a cross-species emotion neuroscience with immediate implications for understanding emotional imbalances that characterise psychiatric disorders. Disgust is clearly a basic sensory/interoceptive affect (Rozin & Fallon, 1987 Rozin, P. and Fallon, A. 1987. A perspective on disgust. Psychological Review, 94: 23–41. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] [Google Scholar] ), and a socially constructed moral emotion (Haidt, 2003a Haidt, J. 2003a. “The moral emotions”. In Handbook of affective sciences, Edited by: Davidson, R. J. , Scherer, K. R. and Goldsmith, H. H. 852–870. New York: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar] , b Haidt, J. 2003b. The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 108: 814–834. [Google Scholar] ), but perhaps it is a category error to classify disgust as a basic emotion. It is more akin to a sensory affect. If we consider sensory disgust to be a basic emotional systems, then why not include hunger, thirst, fatigue and many other affective states of the body as emotions?