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In the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, personal hygiene behaviours such as proper handwashing have gained significantly more attention and interpersonal contact is performed with great care. Disgust, as a disease-avoidance mechanism, can play an important role in the promotion of hygiene behaviour. We know from previous research that pathogen disgust can be a predictor of an individual's behaviour in the pandemic. Given that the pandemic greatly affects our food and eating behaviour, the current study aims to add to the existing evidence and to complement it by investigating the role of food-specific disgust in the pandemic. For that, we conducted an online survey in Germany in April 2020, while the pandemic was spreading in Europe. A total of 519 participants completed the survey and provided information about their COVID-19-related attitudes and behaviours and about their food disgust sensitivity. The results show that food disgust sensitivity is an important predictor for an individual's feelings, shopping behaviour, and disease-preventive behaviour related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Given that the success of political measures to fight the pandemic critically depends on the population to support and follow the proposed measures, a better understanding of the factors driving individual behaviour is key. Implications for pandemic management are discussed., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

The cross-cultural testing of scales represents an important step in the scale validation process. The present study evaluated whether the eight-item short version of the recently developed Food Disgust Scale (FDS-short) is a reliable and valid tool for measuring food disgust sensitivity in ten countries: Australia, China, England, France, Germany, Mexico, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and the USA. In an online survey, the participants (N = 6128) answered items from the FDS-short and other scales related to (food) disgust sensitivity so as to test the construct and criterion validity of the FDS-short. Confirmatory factor analysis of the one-factor structure of the FDS-short revealed an adequate to good model fit in all the countries except for China. Multiple group analysis to test measurement invariance showed the FDS-short to be metrically invariant in all the tested countries (except for China) relative to Australia. With regard to the construct validity, significant positive correlations were observed in all the countries between the FDS-short and pathogen disgust sensitivity, sexual disgust sensitivity, moral disgust sensitivity, germ aversion, and food neophobia. Criterion validity of the FDS-short in all the tested countries was confirmed by the positive correlations between it and having a sensitive stomach, experiencing gastrointestinal complaints after eating animal-based foods (except for France and Germany), and the perceived infection risk of food-borne diseases in one's country. The direction of the correlations indicated that for each country, those with higher FDS-short scores also scored higher on all the tested constructs than those with lower FDS-short scores. Taken together, the present results indicate that the FDS-short is a reliable and valid tool for assessing food disgust sensitivity across countries., (Copyright © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

We investigated the relationship between perceived bitterness, food disgust sensitivity, and sex. Participants completed the 8-item Food Disgust Scale and a 6-n-propylthiouracil (PROP) taster test and were categorised as PROP non-tasters, medium-tasters, or supertasters. An analysis of variance of between-subject factors sex and PROP taster status was conducted with disgust sensitivity as the dependent variable. We found a significant interaction of sex and PROP taster status on disgust sensitivity and an association between disgust sensitivity and PROP taster status in males but not in females. Our study provided new evidence on sex differences in food disgust and PROP taste sensitivity., (Copyright © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The present set of studies developed and tested the Food Disgust Picture Scale (FDPS). This is a tool for the assessment of food disgust sensitivity that will measure disgust and predict possible reactions. This eight-picture tool can be used in complement to or as a replacement for currently available text-based measures. In an exploratory Study 1 (N = 57), we constructed a scale consisting of eight pictures. Most of them were taken from validated picture databases. They proved powerful in the assessment of food disgust sensitivity. Study 2 built on these results and refined the scale by substituting pictures from Study 1 with freely available images displaying similar content. The basic structure of the FDPS was then replicated in a bigger sample of Swiss adults (N = 538). Correlational analyses using the eight-item Food Disgust Scale (FDS short), the revised version of the Disgust Scale (DS-R), and the food neophobia scale (FNS) supported the convergent validity of the FDPS. In Study 3 (N = 226), we used a test-retest design to demonstrate the short-term stability of the FDPS. As a result of these studies, the present work provides a short and comprehensive measure of food disgust sensitivity. This novel approach of using pictures to induce a disgust response independently of language significantly facilitates intercultural research on disgust. The FDPS will further contribute to the understanding of food-related disgust and its impact on our food choices., (Copyright © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)