Josh Rottman
Appearances
It's Been a Minute
Your date gave you 'The Ick?' That might be a YOU problem.
And I think in many cases, if we do that, we'll realize that there's not a great reason for it.
It's Been a Minute
Your date gave you 'The Ick?' That might be a YOU problem.
Thank you so much, Brittany. I really appreciate it.
It's Been a Minute
Your date gave you 'The Ick?' That might be a YOU problem.
Thank you for having me.
It's Been a Minute
Your date gave you 'The Ick?' That might be a YOU problem.
The development of disgust is really slow and protracted, unlike many emotions that emerge within the first year of life or so. It seems like disgust doesn't really robustly come online until around five, six years of age. At the point when kids are really starting to think about cooties and in-groups and out-groups and those kinds of allegiances get really important.
It's Been a Minute
Your date gave you 'The Ick?' That might be a YOU problem.
But it's really the first few years of life when it seems like disgust would have been the most necessary because kids' immune systems aren't very developed at that point.
It's Been a Minute
Your date gave you 'The Ick?' That might be a YOU problem.
Yeah, so if it was all about keeping us healthy, it seems likely that it would have emerged earlier in development.
It's Been a Minute
Your date gave you 'The Ick?' That might be a YOU problem.
Overall, I think disgust is an extremely harmful emotion. Really? Yeah. And there's a lot of good evidence that genocides and a lot of horrific things that have happened in society have been correlated in some way with disgust. A lot of genocides have been perpetuated through propaganda that paints the outgroup in some kind of of icky, revulsive way as cockroaches or rats.
It's Been a Minute
Your date gave you 'The Ick?' That might be a YOU problem.
So yeah, I mean, disgust can be really powerfully leveraged to distance us from individuals or whole groups and to think of them as less than human in some way. The ick is probably a much more minor version of that, but I think dating is one case in which probably these feelings of ickiness are not going to be great signals of whether someone's going to be good for us and a good partner.
It's Been a Minute
Your date gave you 'The Ick?' That might be a YOU problem.
Because there's something about it that just feels really pathetic.
It's Been a Minute
Your date gave you 'The Ick?' That might be a YOU problem.
I think so. It's something that in our evolutionary history might have helped us to survive and reproduce. But I think a lot of the specific icks that people have are reflections of social norms that we might want to challenge. So sometimes people might feel the ick if their male partner is not being sufficiently masculine or something like that.
It's Been a Minute
Your date gave you 'The Ick?' That might be a YOU problem.
And that might be an aversion to the kind of norm violation against masculinity and And so maybe for that person, that would help guide them to someone who is more masculine and who in that particular society would lead them to have higher social standing or something like that. But I think we should always kind of step back and ask ourselves why we're feeling the ick.