Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy Clin. Psychol. Psychother. 16, 268–275 (2009) Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/cpp.623 Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Disgust and Eating Disorder Symptomatology in a Non-Clinical Population: The Role of Trait Anxiety and Anxiety Sensitivity Graham C. L. Davey* and Laura Chapman University of Sussex, Brighton, UK The present paper reports the results of a study investigating the relationship between a domains-independent measure of disgust (the Disgust Propensity and Sensitivity Scale-Revised) and measures of eating disorder symptomatology in a non-clinical population. Signifi- cant correlations between disgust sensitivity and disgust propensity and selected eating disorder symptomatology measures suggested that disgust is significantly correlated with measures of eating dis- order symptomatology and is appraised more negatively. However, both measures of disgust propensity and sensitivity failed to predict any significant residual variance in scores on eating symptomatology measures when either trait anxiety or anxiety sensitivity was con- trolled for. This suggests that while the experience of disgust may be heightened in individuals with eating disorders, it may be linked to other relevant emotions such as anxiety and anxiety sensitivity rather than being an independent risk factor for symptoms. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key Practitioner Message: • The experience of disgust may be heightened in individuals with eating disorder symptomatology. • Disgust levels may not be an independent predictor of eating disorder symptoms. • In those with eating disorder symotomatology disgust may be linked to other emotions such as anxiety and anxiety sensitivity. Keywords: Disgust, Anorexia Nervosa, Bulimia Nervosa, Trait Anxiety, Anxiety Sensitivity, Body Dissatisfaction, Drive for Thinness * Correspondence to: Graham Davey, Department of Psy- chology, University of Sussex, Brighton, BN1 9QH, UK. E-mail: grahamda@sussex.ac.uk nausea (Davey, 1994; Rozin & Fallon, 1987). Over the past decade, there has been a growing interest in the role of the disgust emotion in psychopathol- ogy, and particularly anxious psychopathology (e.g., Phillips, Senior, Fahy, & David, 1998; Woody & Teachman, 2000). For example, disgust has been identified as an experienced emotion in a variety of psychopathologies, including specific phobias such as animal phobias generally (Davey, 2008; Matchett & Davey, 1991) and spider phobia spe- cifically (Mulkens, de Jong, & Merckelbach, 1996), blood injury and inoculation phobia (Page, 1994; Disgust is a universal negative emotion char- acterized by a distinctive facial expression and specific cognitive, physiological and behavioural components. It has been viewed primarily as a food-rejection response that manifests as a fear of contamination, avoidance of disgusting objects, and physiological responses such as feelings of