Love Stories

The first time I heard of "the ick" came from watching the hit Netflix show Nobody Wants This. In the show, Kristen Bell's character suddenly develops the ick for Adam Brody's character (whom she's dating) after a series of relatively minor faux pas as he's trying to impress her parents. He wears a cheesy sports coat and makes one-too-many corny jokes, to be precise. She suddenly finds herself repulsed by him, and insists that no one has "ever come back from the ick."

Adam Brody's character eventually wins her back over with an impressive display of emotional maturity, but it was a fascinating sequence nonetheless. It brought the term to the attention of a lot of viewers and catapulted it even higher into the zeitgeist.

A new study in the journal Personality and Individual Differences aims to shed light on this phenomenon, and the people who experience it.

The Ick even made it to JeopardyGiphy

For starters, let's define "the ick," or rather, let the authors of the study do it:

"The 'ick' 'is a sudden and visceral aversion to a romantic partner, often triggered by behaviors or characteristics that superficially signal incompatibility or low mate quality."

In other words, it's when a person says or does something that really skeeves you out or turns you off. It sounds a little silly, but the ick can be extremely powerful and tough for people to shake. That's because, as the authors note, whatever the behavior is that icked you out might signal that you're not a good match for this person, or that they're just a low quality partner in general. So in a sense, it's an evolutionary protection mechanism.

It seems extremely harsh that our bodies would be trained to reject partners at the slightest misstep, but in evolutionary terms, it makes a lot of sense:

"A false-positive error—accepting an incompatible partner—can drain resources, reduce reproductive success, and carry long-term relational consequences, whereas a false-negative error—rejecting a compatible partner—results in a missed opportunity but poses fewer immediate risks," the study says.

So if the guy you were into shows up in a fedora one day, it's probably best to show him the door posthaste. Better safe than sorry.

What causes the ick?

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

It's usually brought on by things that, on the surface, seem pretty unimportant. We're not talking about cheating, emotional abuse, or being a bad person. It's much subtler than that. The researchers use lots of examples from TV to make their point:

"In Seinfeld ... Jerry is disgusted by his date's 'manly' hands; and in Sex and the City ... Carrie is revolted by a lover after learning he wrote her a love song."

But where the actual studying part of the study comes in is that the authors began inhaling TikTok videos where users discussed their experiences getting the ick, and they began rigorously categorizing the responses.

The real-life examples are even more nit-picky, like someone who licks their fingers before turning a page. Girls "tripping in public." A guy wearing jorts, or bending over too far and accidentally showing his butt crack. Or, in Adam Brody's case, wearing a sports coat. In many cases these simple (and hilarious!) things are death knells for a relationship once the ick sets in.

The researchers broke ick-inducing behaviors down into a few buckets: Gender incongruence, public embarrassment, or physical appearance. Believe it or not, physical appearance was not the most common! Gender incongruence — guys doing girly things, girls doing manly things — was the biggest category of ick-driving behavior. One girl said the guy she was dating gave her "the ick" when he laid his head on her shoulder affectionately.

Wow...

What getting "the ick" might say about you

Prime candidate for The IckGiphy

The next part of the study involved recruiting participants who were willing to answer questions about their own experiences with this phenomenon. After thorough interviews, researchers narrowed down three traits that seem to indicate people are more likely to get "the ick,":

Narcissism. People who like to be the center of attention or otherwise display narcissistic tendencies were highly correlated in this study.

Perfectionism. Not perfectionism of the self, mind you! But people who scored highly on questions related to holding the people around them to exceptionally high standards were more prone to "the ick."

Disgust sensitivity. People were more likely to have experienced "the ick" if they answered strongly on questions relating to feeling disgust even outside of a dating or interpersonal sense. People who get exceptionally grossed out by disgusting things are more likely to experience revulsion at minor behaviors in a romantic partner.

Any of those things sound like you? If you're feeling judged, don't. Remember, getting icked-out by a partner isn't necessarily a bad thing. It could be an evolutionary response trying to protect you from making a bad choice (like having a baby with a weirdo). Though it's also important to remember this biological strategy also discards a lot of potentially great partners, so listen to your ick wisely — you might just want to give fedora guy another chance, after all.