Study: Sexual arousal may lessen disgust

Disgust is a powerful feeling that helps defend people from potentially sickening circumstances. Objectively, sexual intercourse could be seen as one of those circumstances, involving, as it does, saliva and other bodily fluids. But new research raises the interesting question of how a vital but potentially icky activity such as sex can seem pleasant and doable.Perhaps it’s because sexual arousal somehow dampens the natural disgust response. …

The researchers found that the women exposed to sexually arousing material found activities that might otherwise seem sexually disgusting, such as touching seemingly used condoms, significantly less nasty than the other participants. To a lesser extent, sexually aroused women also found non-sex-related disgusting tasks less foul.