What do men who wear sandals, run after ping pong balls, and have long nails have in common? Many women are “disgusted.”
Ick is a modern slang term to describe a sudden feeling of disgust or repulsion toward someone you had previously been attracted to because of something they did or said.
Although it seems like an affliction of modern women, scientists suggest that the malaise could be more than just a dating tendency: It could be an evolutionary survival tactic.
A growing body of research, showing that female primates are more easily disgusted than their male counterparts by food, potential mates, and even neighbors, suggests that women evolved to feel disgust more easily to protect themselves.
In the wild, these females avoid mating with partners who show signs of syphilis and are less likely to eat foods infected with common bacteria because they are disgusted by it, which protects them from getting sick.
This helps them avoid illnesses during pregnancy and parenting, times when both the baby’s and mother’s immune systems are particularly susceptible to life-threatening illnesses.
Male animals are much less selective, Cécile Sarabian, a cognitive ecologist at the Institute for Advanced Studies, told National Geographic.
In the wild, he observed female macacas examining and cleaning their food before consuming it, and sometimes skipping a meal when their food was contaminated. Meanwhile, the males ate without concern, whenever they could.
Kristen Bell’s character on Netflix’s Nobody Wants This became ill from her on-screen boyfriend Adam Brody, but the two were able to recover.
Although it may seem like disgust has to do with demandingness, scientists believe it evolved to keep people safe from things that could hurt or make them sick.
For example, if people didn’t dislike poop, they might be less hygienic when it comes to their sanitation practices, meaning more people would come into contact with pathogens found in feces like cholera and typhoid. .
Tara Cepon Robins, a biological anthropologist at the University of Colorado, said national geography: “This is what disgust is all about: we are programmed to feel disgust at things that have harmed people in the past.”
All primates show some signs of displeasure, but until recently scientists didn’t know there could be a gender gap.
Dr. Sarabian observed differences between male and female macaques in the wild.
While preparing their food, the females cleaned their morsels while the males ate without much consideration.
Later, when testing animals, they found that girls were less likely to have parasites called soil-transmitted helminths, which come mainly from feces.
Dr Sabrian highlighted older researchin which she did not participate, in Gorillas that illustrated similar sexual differences.
Female western lowland gorillas, found in central Africa, are particularly sensitive to visual signs of a bacteria called Treponema, which causes a rash on the face.
This is the same bacteria that causes syphilis.
And although people think that being fooled by their Tinder date at a bar is bad, when female gorillas see that a male within their troop has these facial rashes, they sometimes choose to leave their group behind entirely.
Then they hit the road to find a better pack to settle with.
Similarly, in 2019, researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Primate Research showed that female olive baboons are more likely than males to avoid sexual intercourse when they or their partner show signs of syphilis.
Therefore, the researchers concluded, female baboons showed “greater selectivity overall” and were therefore less likely to become ill with an STI.
And the disgust extends beyond the animal kingdom. The disgust response has been demonstrated in humans.
In one study, researchers showed volunteers photographs of dirty situations or asked them to imagine things like stepping in poop with their bare feet or finding a bug in their food. They then asked the volunteers to rate their displeasure on a numerical scale, Robins explained.
In Western societies, women scored higher than men on their disgust ratings.
Dr. Robins’ personal research focused on indigenous people groups in Ecuador and found that those who responded with more disgust to a hypothetical situation were less likely to have bacterial or viral illnesses.
Simply put, feeling disgust protected them from getting sick, whether they were men or women.
This could be especially important for women as they are responsible for raising children, whose fragile immune systems are particularly susceptible to foodborne illnesses.
Studies on gray mouse lemurs show that females are more selective about their food than males, and may even give up a meal if it does not seem suitable. Studies on western lowland gorillas have shown that females who detect signs of syphilis in one of their neighbors may leave their community.
Psychologists have suggested several reasons why many women seem to resent their potential partners.
Texas-based clinical psychologist Naomi Bernstein agreed that evolution could play a role.
He said certain physical ailments, such as having chapped lips or poor coordination, could be subconscious signals that someone’s genes are less ideal than those of their competitors.
She he told time: “That’s embarrassing, which means it might not be acceptable to a broader social group, which, going back to evolution, was essential for human survival.”
It’s also possible that the discomfort is purely psychological, driven by the desire to emotionally protect oneself from being hurt, New York-based clinical psychologist Phoebe Shepherd told Time.
It is common, he explained, for people to react to unknown things with fear or disgust, out of a sense of protection. Dr. Shepard said, “Sometimes I wonder, if someone feels like they’re nauseous, is it actually their body saying, ‘This doesn’t sound familiar.'”
If you feel discomfort and you’re pretty sure it’s not for a biological reason, then Todd Baratz, a bicoastal therapist, told Time that you can try to overcome the feeling of disgust.
If you focus on other, more positive aspects of your date and feel in your heart the desire to try again, you may find that the ick doesn’t matter as much to you.
He said: “Dating is an experiment and sometimes you need to run experiments a few times to see what happens.”