Examples might include your stomach turning at the smell of spoiled food or the sight of feces. The new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences investigates whether people who experience a greater pathogen disgust sensitivity—that is, people who are more sensitive to feeling disgust—will become exposed to fewer pathogens in their local environments, and thus suffer fewer infections, explains coauthor Theresa E. Gildner, assistant professor of biological anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. Exposure to pathogens Researchers tested whether a self-reported individual level of disgust in response to likely sources of infection was associated with signs of infection in three Indigenous Ecuadorian Shuar communities. The communities were all located in high-pathogen environments, but with differing levels of economic development and participation in activities such as hunting.