Sex differences in disgust sensitivity fade with age, large-scale study finds

Women are often thought to be more easily disgusted than men, particularly when it comes to things like spoiled food or contamination risk. But a new study published in Physiology & Behavior suggests that this gender gap may shrink or even disappear with age. Researchers found that younger women consistently reported higher levels of disgust, food-related worries, and contamination fears than men—but these differences diminished with older age.

The emotion of disgust plays a key role in protecting people from threats like spoiled food, disease, and toxins. Previous research has shown that women tend to score higher on measures of disgust sensitivity than men, and an evolutionary explanation has often been proposed.

The reasoning is that because women carry the biological burden of pregnancy, being highly sensitive to potential sources of harm—especially from food—can serve as a protective mechanism for both mother and fetus. However, as women age and move beyond their reproductive years, this heightened sensitivity might become less necessary. The current study was designed to test that idea.

“It just seemed obvious to me that disgust sensitivity would not be stable across the lifespan, because of the different processes and factors that affect the human judgment and that change naturally as one grows older,” said study author Anne Berthold, a lecturer at the Department of Health Sciences and Technology at ETH Zürich.

For their study, the researchers reanalyzed several large datasets, each containing information about participants’ age, sex, and responses to measures of disgust sensitivity, food neophobia (reluctance to try new foods), health-related food concerns, and contamination fears. The data came from diverse sources, including a nationally representative panel from Switzerland, a cross-European public opinion survey, and previously published studies. In total, responses from more than 28,000 people aged 18 to 98 were included in the analyses.

In the first dataset, from the Food Panel Switzerland 2.0 (2018), researchers analyzed responses from 2,287 adults. Disgust sensitivity was measured using an eight-item scale that asked participants to rate how disgusting they found scenarios like eating animal cartilage or encountering unhygienic food. As expected, women rated these items as more disgusting than men did. But when age was taken into account, an interesting pattern emerged: among younger adults, women showed significantly higher disgust sensitivity, but this gender difference shrank among older adults and was no longer statistically significant in the oldest age group.

The second study, which included 312 German-speaking participants in an online questionnaire about food packaging, measured both food disgust sensitivity and food neophobia. Again, younger women reported more disgust and food avoidance than younger men. But by middle age, those sex differences became less pronounced, and among older adults, men and women had similar levels of both traits. Notably, while men’s disgust and neophobia scores increased with age, women’s scores remained stable or declined slightly.

The third study used publicly available data from the 2005 Eurobarometer survey, which asked over 24,000 Europeans about their concerns related to food safety, including genetically modified ingredients, foodborne pathogens, and pesticide residues. Women consistently expressed greater concern than men about food-related risks. However, as with the earlier studies, the difference between men and women narrowed as participants aged. Once again, age and sex interacted in a way that supported the researchers’ hypothesis: men’s health-related food concerns rose with age, while women’s remained relatively steady.

The final study assessed fear of contamination using the Padua Inventory, a psychological questionnaire that includes items like avoiding public telephones for fear of germs. This sample included 893 participants from Switzerland. The pattern held: younger women reported more contamination fear than younger men, but by older adulthood, the gap was gone. Men’s fear of contamination increased with age, while women’s remained unchanged.

Taken together, the four studies paint a consistent picture. Younger women are more sensitive to disgust and health-related threats than younger men. But with increasing age, these sex differences diminish. In some cases, older men actually report higher sensitivity than women.

“The most important take home message is that our perception and judgments are not as stable as we might assume in the first place,” Berthold told PsyPost.

The researchers suggest that two competing forces may explain this convergence. For women, the decline in reproductive potential with age reduces the need for high disgust sensitivity as a form of fetal protection. At the same time, aging itself brings new vulnerabilities to illness for both sexes, which may lead to greater caution and risk avoidance in general.

“I thought that the turning point when women and men become similar would be an earlier age (because the menopause usually is around the age of 50) – but it was oftentimes later,” Berthold said. “However, come to think of it, it makes ultimately sense to be more careful (a.k.a more sensitive) for a longer period until one can be absolutely sure that the likelihood of pregnancy is off the table.”

While the findings were consistent across diverse datasets, the researchers acknowledged some limitations. All the data came from self-report questionnaires, which may not fully capture how people behave in real-life situations.

“The findings are based on self-report measures,” Berthold noted. “We, therefore, cannot be 100% sure the pattern would be found in people’s behavioral responses. It would be interesting to tackle this limitation and study people’s behavioral responses (like seating distances) or maybe their implicit attitudes with a priming study.”

Despite these caveats, the study provides robust evidence that the commonly observed gender difference in disgust sensitivity is not fixed. Instead, it shifts across the lifespan in a way that aligns with both evolutionary theory and broader patterns of health vulnerability.

The authors also note that sharing and reanalyzing large public datasets—something increasingly encouraged in psychological science—can be a powerful way to test new hypotheses.

“I want to encourage researchers to look at datasets of other researchers (hopefully finding similar results),” Berthold said. “That would be good for two reasons: a) in case of similar findings that could be a further (kind of external) validation of the hypothesis and b) if we share our datasets more often it might help regarding open science and integrity of research practices.”

The study, “Not so different anymore? Women’s and men’s disgust sensitivity becomes similar with increasing age,” was authored by Anne Berthold, Angela Bearth, Jeanine Ammann, and Michael Siegrist.