Table 1.
Sample Demographics.
Table 2.
Experiment Overview.
Table 3.
Definitions of Rated Dimensions.
Fig 1.
Proportions of lexical associates from moist-averse and non-averse participants by category. Error bars denote 95% confidence intervals. Asterisk indicates a statistically significant difference at the p < .001 level.
Table 4.
Most and Least Frequently Recalled Words.
Table 5.
Demographics of Word Aversion.
Table 6.
Predicting Word Aversion by Individual Differences.
Table 7.
Speculation on Cause of Word Aversion.
Fig 2.
Ratings of the aversivness of “moist” and words from six lexical categories from Experiment 1, grouped by participants who identified as moist-averse or non-averse. Error bars denote standard errors of the means. Asterisks indicate statistically significant differences at the p < .05 level.
Table 8.
Difference in Aversiveness Ratings by Word Type.
Fig 3.
Rated words sorted from most to least aversive.
Separate means of word aversiveness are presented for participants who reported an aversion to moist (dark red) and for participants who did not (light blue). A subset of words are identified in the plot as reference points.
Fig 4.
Positive and Negative Connotations.
Relationship between ratings of the 64 words’ negative and positive connotations. The dotted line represents what would be expected if the ratings of the words’ negative connotations were perfectly anti-correlated with the words’ positive connotations. The solid line reflects predicted values from the regression line, which revealed linear and quadratic relationships between the ratings. Items that deviated from the general pattern and “moist” are identified with labels.
Fig 5.
Ratings of “moist” along six dimensions grouped by participants who identified as moist-averse or non-averse. Error bars denote standard errors of the means. Asterisks indicate statistically significant differences at the p < .001 level.
Table 9.
Differences in Rated Dimensions of Moist.
Fig 6.
Ratings of “moist” along six dimensions grouped by condition: immediately before rating “moist” participants either watched a video designed to make “moist” seem cringeworthy, a video designed to prime a positive culinary sense of the word, or no video. Error bars denote standard errors of the means.