The ick: dating, disgust and evolutionary psychology
All In The Mind
ABC listen
4.4 • 785 Ratings
🗓️ 8 March 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Have you ever experienced "the ick"?
It's that sudden, visceral feeling of being put off by someone you're dating. Maybe it's their hat, a hobby or even the way they laugh.
Stories of the ick are prolific online, but it leaves us with a question - what causes it?
To separate red flags from disgust, we get into the psychology of the ick - why you might feel icky, if it should be a deal breaker, and what it says about your own attachment style.
If you want to hear more about dating and psychology, check out our episode The false promise of love languages.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music and more. |
| 0:10.3 | It's like your body shrivels up into a little raisin. |
| 0:14.5 | Like you're like this beautiful, fruitful plum and then you're just like... |
| 0:18.7 | Let me tell you a modern dating story. |
| 0:23.5 | It feels unfair to the other person |
| 0:26.6 | because it's just like, this is just like literally a physical reaction |
| 0:29.3 | that I'm having right now. |
| 0:30.3 | I don't want to be having it, but sometimes it's just like, |
| 0:33.4 | like that's the noise that my body is making. |
| 0:37.0 | And this story is called The Ick. |
| 0:40.3 | Act 1, Michaela and the dating apps. |
| 0:44.8 | I had been dating the same kind of guy for a while, and it was like a, I guess, a bit of a, like, a bad boy. |
| 0:51.5 | I was like, okay, it's time to maybe review my selections and |
| 0:56.1 | move away from my normal type. So someone on one of the apps liked me and in his profile, |
| 1:02.7 | he looks like a really, really lovely guy. Like he had lots of female friends, like a diverse |
| 1:07.1 | kind of friendship circle from all of his photos. He was interested in food. |
| 1:11.3 | It was all looking good until I swiped down to this one photo where he was throwing a |
| 1:17.2 | kangol and then I swipe down to the second photo and he was wearing this like felt fedora. And I was like, |
| 1:22.5 | oh. The problem with hats, specifically fedoras, is they give Michaela the ick. |
| 1:30.2 | If you're not familiar with that term, we'll explain what it means in a moment, but you can probably guess. |
| 1:35.5 | And I feel like as soon as I say that, I'm like, oh, I've got the ick. |
| 1:39.7 | She knows this hat thing is a bit silly and definitely minor in the grand scheme of things, |
... |
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