Mating strategy, disgust, and food neophobia
Date
2015Source Title
Appetite
Print ISSN
0195-6663
Electronic ISSN
1095-8304
Publisher
Elsevier
Volume
85
Pages
30 - 35
Type
ArticleItem Usage Stats
128
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Abstract
Food neophobia and disgust are commonly thought to be linked, but this hypothesis is typically implicitly assumed rather than directly tested. Evidence for the connection has been based on conceptually and empirically unsound measures of disgust, unpublished research, and indirect findings. This study (N = 283) provides the first direct evidence of a relationship between trait-level food neophobia and trait-level pathogen disgust. Unexpectedly, we also found that food neophobia varies as a function of sexual disgust and is linked to mating strategy. Using an evolutionary framework, we propose a novel hypothesis that may account for these previously undiscovered findings: the food neophilia as mating display hypothesis. Our discussion centers on future research directions for discriminatively testing this novel hypothesis.
Keywords
DisgustEvolutionary psychology
Food neophobia
Food preferences
Food selection
Mating strategy