Anger, Contempt, and Disgust: Addressing Political Conflict, Violence, and Post-Traumatic Stress
Jennifer Sills is a bilingual physician associate (PA-C) practicing in Miami Beach, FL. Jennifer specializes in internal medicine and Psychiatry. She is dedicated to educating her patients, promoting wellness and preventing and treating human illness. She has the ability to perform physical exams, order and interpret ancillary... more
Pain, in some cases, is a lack of understanding. Group emotions arise when a sufficient proportion of members share similar emotions about their group (the “ingroup”) or another group (the “outgroup”), although no definition or consensus in the field exists about what that proportion may be. As in individuals, groups have emotional reactions to events that impact their perceived welfare and survival. Group-level emotions motivate members’ behaviors as a whole. Woven into the group’s overarching narratives of life, they provide guidelines and bases for making attributions about ingroups and outgroups.
In 2004, Metro Detroit had one of the largest settlements of Middle Eastern people, including Arabs and Chaldo Assyrians in the United States. Dearborn’s sizeable Arab community consists largely of Lebanese people who immigrated for jobs in the auto industry in the 1920s, and of more recent Yemenis and Iraquis. Growing up in a multiethnic minority around immigrants, I frequently encountered peers who were refugees which, in part, shaped my perspective as a clinician practicing psychiatry and internal medicine.
Inter-ethnic and political conflicts are raging in many regions around the world, especially in the Middle East today with the latest highly publicized Hamas attacks in Gaza. Since the beginning of the second Intifada in September 2000 through the end of January 2011, thousands of people have been killed, including minors (B’Tselem, Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories).
Exposure to extreme ethnic-political violence interferes with children’s cognitive and emotional processing of those experiences and leads to the three hallmark criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; American Psychiatric Association, 2000): re-experiencing the event (e.g., intrusive memories, dreams); avoidance of stimuli associated with the events and emotional numbing; and symptoms of increased arousal (e.g., hypervigilance, irritability, sleep problems).
Regarding youth in the Middle East, although a few studies have shown that the majority of youth exposed to extreme political violence in Gaza (e.g., bombardment of homes) exhibit PTSD, there is remarkable resilience among youth. The risk and protective factor model of developmental psychopathology (Garmezy & Neuchterlein, 1972; Institute of Medicine, 2009; Rutter, 1990) has been the predominant framework for identifying ecological and individual factors that place children at risk for developing psychopathology and promote resilience, i.e., “the process of, capacity for, or outcome of successful adaptation despite challenging or threatening circumstances” (Masten et al., 1990, p. 426). Key studies identified common factors that promoted positive outcomes despite exposure to adverse conditions
In one of the few longitudinal studies, Punamäki et al. (2001) assessed 86 Palestinian children during and three years after the Intifada. Children who were exposed to higher levels of violence and who reported passive responses to hypothetical scenes of Intifada-like violence had elevated PTSD outcomes; however, that association was not present for youth who perceived their mothers as non-rejecting and non-hostile.
Second, parental mental health seems to play a role in outcomes for children exposed to political violence. Laor, Wolmer, and Cohen (2001) reported on a 5-year longitudinal study of 107 Israeli children and their mothers whose homes were damaged during the Gulf War SCUD missile attack. There was a significant association between children’s internalizing and externalizing problems and their mothers’ psychological maladjustment. Qouta, Punamaki, and El Sarraj (2005) and Thabet et al. (2008) found that among Palestinians, mothers’ PTSD symptoms predicted their children’s PTSD symptoms. Within our data set, we can examine whether measures of positive parenting strategies and parental mental health moderate the effects of exposure to violence on their children.
The following items comprise domains of political conflict and violent events:
- Loss of, or injury to, a friend or family member (5 items; e.g., “Has a friend or acquaintance of yours been injured as a result of political or military violence?”)
- Non-violent events (6 items; e.g., “How often have you spent a prolonged period of time in a security shelter or under curfew?”)
- Self or significant others participated in political demonstrations (3 items; e.g., “How often have you known someone who was involved in a violent political demonstration?”)
- Witnessing actual violence (4 items asked Palestinians about exposure to violence perpetrated by Israelis, and the same 4 items asked Israelis about exposure to violence perpetrated by Palestinians; e.g., “How often have you seen right in front of you Palestinians (Israelis) being held hostage, tortured, or abused by Israelis (Palestinians?”)
- Witnessing media portrayals of violence (6 items, worded for Palestinians to reflect violence perpetrated by Israelis, and worded for Israelis to reflect violence perpetrated by Palestinians; e.g., “How often have you seen video clips or photographs of injured or martyred Palestinians (injured or dead Israelis) on stretchers or the ground because of an Israeli (Palestinian) attack?”).
When comparing anger, contempt, and disgust, all, perhaps, negative in terms of valence, important differences among these emotions clearly show that they are not alike, which raises major practical implications. Anger, contempt, and disgust have different physiologies, mental states, and nonverbal expressions, implying different behaviors.
Angry people have an increased heart rate, and their blood flows differentially to their arms and hands; this prepares them to fight because anger functions to remove obstacles. However, disgust causes an individual to eliminate or reject contaminated objects. As a primary function, contempt makes someone communicate their evaluations of another’s actions vis-à-vis status and hierarchy. Therefore, anger focuses on persons’ or groups’ actions, while contempt and disgust focus on who they are.
Laypersons often do not recognize the important distinctions among emotions. In particular, for several reasons, disgust plays a special role in understanding terrorism and violence. First, studies of emotions in interpersonal conflicts indicate that disgust (and contempt), not anger, contributes to the breakdown of relationships (which also could represent a component of hostile acts between groups). Second, disgust is a basic, primary emotion elicited by the perception of contamination or disease agents. It is universal, not only in its signal properties but also in terms of its elicitors.
Third, disgust is a moral emotion often used to sanction persons’ moral beliefs and behaviors. Fourth, anecdotal observations of the videos of terrorists, such as Usama Bin Ladin or Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung Hui, as well as the speeches and writings of world leaders (e.g., Hitler, Milosevic) who incited wars, revealed an escalation of disgust, as seen in facial expressions, leading up to violent acts.
Disgust drives individuals to kill without discretion. For instance, terrorists do not differentiate between men, women, or children; infidels (or vermin) must be eliminated. How can transgenerational trauma be addressed and a better future be promoted? There is still much to be examined and considered.
Rozin, Haidt, and McCauley, “Disgust: The Body and Soul Emotion,” 1999, 429-445.
R.J. Sternberg, “A Duplex Theory of Hate: Development and Application to Terrorism, Massacres, and Genocide,” Review of General Psychology 7, no. 3 (2003): 299-328.
Sternberg, “A Duplex Theory of Hate,” 2003, 299-328.
Sternberg, “A Duplex Theory of Hate,” 2003, 299-328.
D. Matsumoto and L. Juang, Culture and Psychology (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2007).
S. Atran and R. Axelrod, “Sacred Barriers to Conflict Resolution,” Science 317 (2007):
