Further evidence for associations between short-term mating strategy and sexual disgust

Al-Shawaf et al. (2015, Evolution & Human Behavior, 36, 199-205) found that people who were more interested in pursuing a short-term mating strategy (indexed by higher total scores on the Revised Sociosexual Orientation Inventory) reported less sexual disgust (indexed by lower scores on the sexual disgust subscale of the Three Domain Disgust Scale). By contrast with these results for sexual disgust, AI-Shawaf et al. (2015) observed no significant associations between interest in pursuing a short-term mating strategy and moral or pathogen disgust. This pattern of results, wherein sociosexuality correlates with lower sexual disgust but is unconnected to disgust more generally, may indicate specific cognitive adaptations that counter the possible disgust responses associated with engaging in short-term mating. Here we replicated Al-Shawaf et al.'s (2015) findings for sexual disgust and sociosexual orientation in a large sample (N = 7166). Although we found that individuals who were more interested in pursuing a short-term mating strategy reported significantly lower moral disgust, these relationships were very weak. Together, these results suggest a robust relationship between disgust and short-term mating that is relatively specific to sexual disgust.