THE ROLES OF GENDER, SEX-ROLE, AND DISGUST IN FEAR OF ANIMALS

Ninety-six subjects, resident in Adelaide, Australia, were administere d the Disgust and Contamination Sensitivity Questionnaire (DCSQ); the General Disgust Questionnaire (GDQ), the Fear Survey Schedule (FSS, Re vised Edition); the Australian Sex Role Scale (ASRS), and reported the ir fear of 15 animals on a 10-point scale. A three-factor solution was forced on the animal fear scores namely,'predatory', 'fear relevant', and 'repulsive'. Scores on the DCSQ did not correlate with any of the categories of animal fear or with the Animal Fear subscale of the FSS . In contrast, scores on the GDQ correlated with scores on the FSS, fe ar relevant, and repulsive animals, but not to predatory animals. Femi ninity correlated significantly with fear of all categories of animal and scores on the FSS, whereas masculinity did not. Hierarchical multi ple regression analyses revealed that femininity and GDQ scores were s ignificant predictors of scores on the FSS Further, femininity predict ed fear of predatory animals while disgust did not. In contrast, disgu st predicted fear of repulsive animals whereas femininity did not. Fin ally, both femininity and disgust predicted fear of fear-relevant anim als. It is suggested that femininity is predictive of fear of animals in general, while disgust is predictive of disease avoidance. Copyrigh t (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.