Abstract
There is an accumulating literature indicating a relationship between disgust sensitivity and anxiety in a number of psychopathologies, such as phobias, OCD and eating disorders. However, there are few studies that attempt to address the issue of the directionality of the relationship between disgust and anxiety in anxiety disorders as a primary aim. This study therefore aims to assess whether anxiety mediates disgust, or disgust mediates anxiety. Specifically it was hypothesised that a manipulation that increased anxiety would also increase reported disgust sensitivity, and that increase would be generalised and not phobic specific. A non-randomised experiment was designed with three experimental groups, a phobic group (as both disgust and anxiety have been implicated in phobias), a socially anxious group (to act as an anxious control), and a non-anxious control group. The participants were drawn from a student population. A between-groups design was used with additional within-subject measures. Significant results were only found in the phobic group. Paired t-tests revealed that this experimental group became more anxious throughout the experiment as measured by an anxiety questionnaire. The phobic group also reported more disgust sensitivity according to Likert scale measures; however this was not reflected in their behaviour on the tasks or on the Disgust Sensitivity Scale. This offers limited support for the experimental hypothesis; however the findings were not as significant as expected. The results are discussed in terms of clinical applications and directions for future research.