New study nails down “the ick”

You may have heard people talking about 'the ick': a recently popularised term for a feeling of disgust triggered by a specific, often extremely trivial, behaviour from a romantic partner. You may even have experienced it yourself – suddenly losing interest in someone after watching them chase a ping pong ball or push a pull door.

But what do people really mean when they say 'the ick', and why are some more prone to getting the ick than others? Brian Collisson and team, writing in Personality and Individual Differences, explore this question. They uncover differences in how men and women experience the ick, as well as personality traits that shape rejection in dating — and argue that this kind of disgust might lead us to hold partners to unrealistically rigid standards.

Before recruiting participants, the team conducted a pilot study, analysing TikTok videos tagged with #theick to identify common triggers. This informed the selection of behaviours assessed in the main study, and included publicly humiliating behaviour (eg. "Shazaming a song in a nightclub"), annoying speech (eg. "saying 'Wow, without me?' whenever I did anything"), an overfocus on social media, and physical appearance (eg. "seeing their butt crack when bending over"), among others.

Following the pilot study, the researchers recruited 125 single adults aged between 24 and 72. Firstly, participants indicated whether they had come across the term "the ick" in a dating context. After reading a definition, they confirmed whether they had ever experienced the ick personally and shared details of the experience.

Next, they rated how likely they would be to experience the ick if a date engaged in the behaviours identified in the pilot study. The items shown to participants varied by gender: women saw icks reported by other women, and men saw those reported by men. Finally, the team measured each participant's general tendency to experience disgust, whether they had perfectionist expectations for their partners, and their levels of grandiose narcissism (an inflated sense of self-importance, dominance, and attention-seeking).

Around half of participants were familiar with the term "the ick", while 64% said they had experienced it once given a definition. On average, participants reported getting the ick around ten times in their dating history (though this dropped to six when excluding one outlier with 300 reported instances!). Experiencing it also affected their dating lives: 42% stopped seeing someone after getting the ick, while 26% ended the relationship immediately.

There were also differences between men and women. Women were far more likely to be familiar with the term than men, with 63% of women knowing it compared to 39% of men (perhaps due to its prevalence in media typically consumed by women). Women also experienced the ick more frequently, with 75% having had the ick compared to 57% of men.

Certain personality traits also made people more prone to the ick. Those with a higher tendency for disgust were also more likely to experience it, though this didn't impact how often they felt it. Grandiose narcissism was linked to stronger ick reactions, as was holding partners to exceptionally high standards. Gender played a role here, too. Among women, perfectionism and narcissism were most strongly correlated with appearance-based and public embarrassment-related icks. Among men, disgust sensitivity was linked to speech-related icks and a distaste for so-called "trendy" behaviours, where partners seemed to be trying too hard to fit in.

This study doesn't tell us much about the purpose of experiencing the ick, such as whether getting the ick — or acting on it — actually helps people make better romantic choices; future research could explore whether these reactions protect against bad relationships or simply lead to unnecessary pickiness. A few icks clearly signalled legitimate red flags — some women described misogyny as an ick, for example. Many others, though, could more accurately be described as trivial, with very little impact on relationship success.

So next time you're about to write someone off for licking their finger before turning a page of their book or writing a cringeworthy Instagram caption, take a pause, and consider whether the ick from something inconsequential might be pushing you towards a rash decision.

Read the paper in full:
Collisson, B., Saunders, E., & Yin, C. (2025). The ick: Disgust sensitivity, narcissism, and perfectionism in mate choice thresholds. Personality and Individual Differences, 238, 113086–113086. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2025.113086

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