The Disgust Traits: Self-Other Agreement in Pathogen, Sexual, and Moral Disgust Sensitivity and Their Independence From HEXACO Personality

A broad literature indicates that pathogen, sexual, and moral disgust sensitivity relate to, among other things, political attitudes, moral condemnation, and symptoms of psychopathology. Consequently, disgust sensitivity has been widely assessed across subfields of psychology. Yet, no work has examined whether self-reports in disgust sensitivity reflect systematic trait variation that is detectable by others, and the extent to which such variation is distinct from broader personality. Here, we present the first study to examine self-other agreement in pathogen, sexual, and moral disgust sensitivity. Romantic partners (n(1) = 290), friends (n(2) = 212), and acquaintances (n(3) = 140) rated each other on these three domains of disgust sensitivity and on HEXACO personality. Correlations between dyad partners' self and other ratings were calculated to estimate the magnitude of self-other agreement. We found self-other agreement in all domains of disgust sensitivity (rs of .46, .66, and .36 for pathogen, sexual, and moral disgust sensitivity, respectively), with this agreement weakly to moderately inferred from personality perceptions (percentages mediated by HEXACO were 15%, 7%, and 33% for pathogen, sexual, and moral disgust sensitivity, respectively). These results suggest that pathogen, sexual, and moral disgust sensitivity reflect systematic trait variation that is detectable by others and distinct from broader personality traits.