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A Psychologist Shares A Quiz To Reveal Your Dating 'Ick Factor'
Understanding what instantly turns you off can uncover your core values, sensory sensitivities, and true relationship needs.
By Mark Travers, Ph.D. | Last Updated:
We've all experienced that sudden, visceral recoil when someone does something that just feels off. Maybe it's the sound of loud chewing, the cringe of watching someone fumble through an awkward social interaction or the subtle phoniness you detect when someone's trying too hard to impress. These instant turn-offs, now colloquially known as "icks," feel automatic and inexplicable, but they're actually windows into your psychological makeup.
The fascinating thing about "icks" is that they're highly individual. What sends one person running for the hills might barely register for another. And this variability is far from random. It often reflects deeper patterns in how you process sensory information, navigate social situations and evaluate someone's "real" character. If you're curious about what your specific ick triggers reveal about your personality, take this quiz to discover your unique "Ick Factor" profile.
The Neuroscience Of Your 'Ick Factor'
The psychological foundation of the "ick" response lies in the disgust system, which is one of our most primitive evolutionary mechanisms. Research published in Personality and Individual Differences has shown that disgust evolved as a pathogen-avoidance system, protecting us from contamination and disease. But in humans, this system has been co-opted for social and moral judgments as well.
When you experience the ick, your anterior insula — a brain region associated with disgust — lights up on fMRI scans. Interestingly, this same region activates whether you're reacting to a bad smell or to someone violating a social norm. This neural overlap explains why social icks (like performative behavior or awkwardness) can feel just as physically repulsive as sensory icks (like bad hygiene).
Individual differences in disgust sensitivity predict a wide range of social behaviors, from political attitudes to mate preferences. People high in disgust sensitivity tend to be more conservative, more cautious about new experiences and more selective about who they let into their social circles. Those low in disgust sensitivity show the opposite pattern, predicting greater openness, higher tolerance for norm violations and more inclusive social networks.
Three Pillars Of The 'Ick'
While icks feel singular and immediate, they actually operate across multiple psychological dimensions. Understanding these dimensions can help you recognize patterns in your own reactions:
- The sensory ick encompasses physical triggers such as sounds, smells, textures and visual stimuli that provoke immediate discomfort. For individuals high on this dimension, sensory icks aren't superficial judgments. They're genuine sources of nervous system overwhelm.
- The social ick relates to how people navigate interpersonal dynamics. Some people are particularly attuned to social awkwardness, experiencing intense secondhand embarrassment when someone violates unspoken social rules. This relates to what psychologists call "rejection sensitivity" and "social monitoring." People high in social monitoring are constantly scanning for signs of disapproval or social missteps, making them more reactive to cringe-worthy moments.
- The authenticity ick captures sensitivity to phoniness and performative behavior. Essentially, it covers any incongruence between someone's words and their energy. Those skilled at "thin-slicing," or the ability to make accurate judgments about people from minimal information, are also more likely to detect inauthenticity, making them more reactive to fake or try-hard behavior.
What Your 'Icks' Say About Your Needs
Your particular collection of icks isn't just about what you dislike; it also reveals what you fundamentally need to feel safe, comfortable and connected. Someone whose icks are primarily sensory needs a calm, predictable physical environment. Similarly, someone whose icks are social needs smooth interpersonal dynamics and emotional attunement. And finally, someone whose icks are about authenticity needs genuine, vulnerable connection.
This insight has practical implications for relationship formation and maintenance. Research shows that couples with mismatched disgust sensitivities report lower relationship satisfaction. If you're highly sensitive to sensory icks and your partner is oblivious to them, you'll experience constant low-level irritation that your partner doesn't understand or validate. The same applies to social and authenticity icks.
Interestingly, icks can also reflect unexamined prejudices or unnecessarily rigid standards. While the emotion itself is automatic, we can examine and sometimes override our disgust responses when we recognize they're based on cultural conditioning rather than genuine incompatibility. Someone who experiences icks around anyone who lacks polish or formal education might benefit from exploring whether they're confusing competence with class markers or cultural capital.
The Paradox Of High Standard 'Icks'
Having a finely-tuned ick detector isn't always advantageous. People with extremely high standards across multiple dimensions of automatic disgust might experience less satisfaction in most of their choices, including romantic partners. They're constantly aware of what's wrong rather than appreciating what's right.
The healthiest approach seems to be of "flexible selectivity" — that is, knowing your non-negotiables while maintaining compassion and openness in other areas. Someone might legitimately need a partner who values authenticity (a core compatibility issue) while learning to accept minor social awkwardness (a surface-level quirk that doesn't affect relationship quality).
Your ick profile can help you identify which sensitivities reflect genuine needs and which might be limiting your connections unnecessarily. The goal isn't to eliminate all standards altogether or force yourself to tolerate things that genuinely bother you. Rather, it's to develop self-awareness about your patterns and make conscious choices about which icks to honor and which to work on softening.
Understanding your ick triggers is more than an exercise in self-knowledge; it's a practical tool for building better relationships, choosing compatible environments and also recognizing when your standards are serving you versus when they're holding you back.
Ready to discover what your instant turn-offs reveal about your personality? Take the Ick Factor Quiz here and learn which of the eight ick archetypes best describes your unique psychological profile.