Beyond Fear: Disgust, Anger, and the Affective Core of Interpersonal Phobias

Integr Psychol Behav Sci. 2026 Jun 3;60(2):49. doi: 10.1007/s12124-026-10006-3.

ABSTRACT

Interpersonal phobias-used here as an analytic label for enduring aversive orientations toward persons or groups, such as xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, racism, and ageism-are often framed primarily as fear- or anxiety-driven. That view captures vigilance and avoidance, but it does not fully explain why such aversions are also expressed in the language of contamination, revulsion, exclusion, social cleansing, and sometimes violence. I argue that interpersonal phobias are better understood through a distinction among fear, anger, and disgust than through a fear-centered account alone. Fear is most relevant when the target is appraised as dangerous under uncertainty, thereby motivating vigilance, mitigation, and avoidance. Anger is most relevant when the target is appraised as obstructive yet changeable, thereby motivating confrontation, punishment, and aggression. Disgust is most relevant when the target is appraised as contaminating, offensive, or fundamentally incompatible and as unlikely to change, thereby motivating severance, exclusion, expulsion, and, in its most radical form, exterminative violence. To organize this argument, I apply the Interaction Discrepancy Model (IDM) as a theoretical extension. Holding accountability to the other constant, uncertainty should favor fear/anxiety and mitigative avoidance, whereas offensiveness combined with low perceived changeability should favor disgust and severance. Anger and disgust can co-occur, but they do different work: anger energizes attack, whereas disgust frames the target as something to remove altogether. I derive falsifiable predictions, outline experimental and experience-sampling designs, and discuss implications for intervention, including the limits of purely anxiety-reduction approaches and the need to target disgust, dehumanization, and appraisals of changeability.

PMID:42230521 | DOI:10.1007/s12124-026-10006-3