It’s not a stereotype — women are actually more grossed out than men. In fact, it is a pattern in all primates. It may be comical, but it is actually an asset.
Female gray mouse lemurs and Japanese macaques are more likely than males to turn up their noses at contaminated foodwhile female western lowland gorillas and olive baboons tend to avoid other animals with skin infections, says the
And the same goes for humans.
Cécile Sarabian, cognitive ecologist at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Toulouse, France, also says that the cumulative effects of female disgust — sbe more selective about what you eat and minimize exposure to infections — may be one of the reasons why female primates live longer than males.
After studying the behavior of Japanese macaques, the researcher noticed that males showed “less caution, and even less research, among males”. Consequently, they had less likely to be infected with geohelminths, an intestinal parasite transmitted through feces than males.
Another example: female Tanzanian baboons refuse to mate with treponema-infected malesa contagious bacteria.
Also in the case of western lowland gorillas, when a male develops pale spots on his face, another sign of treponema infection, some females leave the group in search of a healthier population.
And in people? In one published in 2021, researchers showed or asked 75 volunteers to imagine scenarios “like stepping in feces with your bare feet, or finding a worm in your food, or eating raw chicken, or seeing a mouse in the kitchen” and classifying that disgust into a numerical scale, explains the anthropologist Tara Cepon Robins.
Hair less nIn Western societies, women score higher than men on these measures of disgust.
And disgust can even be protective of human health.
Robins and his team found that among the Shuar, an indigenous group in Ecuador, those who rated Robins’ descriptions of scenes as least disgusting were more likely to be infected with bacteria and viruses.
Sarabian also says that female caution regarding potential sources of infection “makes sense from an evolutionary point of view” since “it is we, the women, who give birth and care for the offspring“.
There are still those who believe that disgust is accentuated when we are most vulnerable to infections — for example, at the beginning of pregnancy. And not without foundation.
One from 2022 proves that, as pregnant women’s immune system weakensthey become more disgusted when faced with scenarios such as expired milk and cockroaches.
“I’m much more aware of the things that can put me at risk in my environment,” says Sarabian. “Disgust is not an emotion that we can get rid of very easily..”
Being disgusted can, therefore, protect us from dangerous scenarios, which can compromise our health — and can, in the long run, give women (or females) a greater average life expectancy.
