  Posts Tagged ‘Affective Neuroscience’  Yup, Dogs Can Be
Disgusted!  Tuesday, November 29th, 2011   It’s been interesting
reading about whether dogs people believe that dogs can
experience disgust. Recall that 66.2 % of seminar participants
said yes, and 78.3% of blog readers who responded said yes (this
may have changed as later responses came in, but not
significantly). (The Morris research listed only 34% of people
responding yes, but a blog reader commented wisely that the
question wasn’t “Can your dog…” but “Have you observed your dog
experiencing disgust.”)  But here’s the deal. Disgust is perhaps
the most basic of all emotions. Disgust, or “an aversion to
something offensive,” is seen in all mammals, most often in
response to a smell or taste that is aversive for some reason.
Our expressions of disgust are similar across species, as Darwin
noted in The Expressions of the Emotions in Man and Animals.
Here’s is a more current illustration of that from Youtube:
Disgust is registered primarily in the An