Blood-injection-injury phobia and fear of spiders: Domain specific individual differences in disgust sensitivity

We investigated whether disgust sensitivity is associated with blood-injection-injury (BII) and spider fear. We also explored whether the relationship between disgust sensitivity and phobic fears is domain specific. Ninety-six undergraduates (all women) completed the Disgust Questionnaire (DQ) (Rozin et al., 1984), The Disgust Scale (DS) (Haidt et al., 1994), the Spider Phobia Questionnaire (SPQ) (Klorman et al., 1974), and the Blood-Injury Phobia Questionnaire (BIQ) (Merckelbach et al., submitted). No relationship was evident between DQ scores and BII fear. Yet, BII fear was found to be related to the Body Envelope Violations subscale of the DS. Spider fear was found to be associated with DQ scores and the Animal sub-scale of the DS. Thus, the relationship between phobic fears and high disgust sensitivity was found to be domain specific with BII fear being related to animal-reminder disgust and spider fear to oralcentred disgust.