Abstract: Disgust has been considered a basic, universal human emotion that functions to protect us from contact with and incorporation of harmful substances. Later, through some combination of biological and cultural evolution, the core rejection impulse of disgust has then expanded into other threat domains. Thus, disgust is considered as a heterogeneous construct consisting of multiple subtypes with distinct characteristics. Core disgust and moral disgust are two major subtypes of the disgust emotion. However, it is unclear whether it is the same disgust, or just contains some common elements in the two types of disgust. We conducted a 2 (cue: valid cues, invalid cues) × 3 (target stimulus type: core disgust, moral disgust, neutral) within-subject design. The current study manipulated attentional resources by a cue-target paradigm. In the valid cueing condition, subjects could obtain sufficient attentional resources, whereas in the invalid cueing condition, attentional resources were relatively insufficient. Core disgust, moral disgust and neutral pictures were taken from the International Affective Picture System, the Chinese Affective Picture System as well as the internet, and were transformed into upper and lower adjacent patchworks of a normal scene and its inverted copy. Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals were recorded while the participants were instructed to pay attention to the structure of the patchworks and to judge whether the normal scene was located in the upper or lower part of the whole patchwork. We used fifteen electrodes to detect the P2 and P3 components which were divided by the time windows in which they occurred: P2, 180~240 ms and P3, 320~420 ms. Repeated measure ANOVAs were conducted on the behavioral data and the measurements derived from ERP waveforms. The behavioral data showed that the response accuracy in the valid cueing condition was significantly higher than that in the invalid cueing condition. Moreover, the reaction time of core disgust was significantly longer than that in moral disgust and neutral stimuli condition. Amplitudes of P2 for core disgust stimuli were significantly larger than those for moral disgust and neutral stimuli. Most importantly, a significant interaction between emotional types and cue types was observed in P3 stage. In the sufficient attention condition, there was no obvious difference between core disgust and moral disgust stimuli. In contrast, the P3 amplitudes of core disgust were significantly larger than those of moral disgust and neutral stimuli when the attentional resource was relatively inadequate. Taken together, these findings have revealed that the processing of core and moral disgust are divergent at different level of attentional resources, which suggest that there are distinct neuro-cognitive processes underlying the core and moral disgust, and provide supporting evidence for the heterogeneity of disgust.

Key words: core disgust, moral disgust, attentional resources, Event Related Potentials (ERPs)

摘要： 厌恶帮助人类避免接触生物病菌、社会道德威胁物。本研究采用“线索—靶”范式考察不同注意资源水平上核心和道德厌恶刺激的认知加工特征。结果发现，核心厌恶刺激诱发的P2波幅显著大于道德厌恶和中性刺激；有效线索下核心厌恶刺激的P3波幅与道德厌恶刺激间差异不显著，而无效线索下核心厌恶刺激的P3波幅显著大于道德厌恶。结果表明两类厌恶刺激在不同注意资源水平上存在加工分离效应，支持了厌恶情绪“异质性”的观点。

关键词: 核心厌恶, 道德厌恶, 注意资源, 事件相关电位