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While sex in itself, though a source of great pleasure, can be gross for some people; a new study suggests that being sexually aroused can bring down the feeling of general disgust in women.  

The study conducted by Dutch researchers is aimed at identifying the psychology which makes women voluntarily engage in kinky sexual activities.   

"Disgust is an emotion," Daniel R. Kelly, an associate professor of philosophy at Purdue University and author of the book "Yuck! The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust" who was not involved in the study was quoted as saying by Huffington Post. "What it's there for, primarily, is to protect us against eating things that might poison us, or coming into close physical proximity to things that might carry infections. That's its mission."

The research results reveal that when sexually aroused, a women's general sense of disgust goes down, making it easier for them to do something that a woman who is not aroused might find repulsive.

"Women [who] were sexually aroused were more willing to touch and do initially disgusting tasks," study co-author Charmaine Borg, a researcher in the department of clinical psychology and experimental psychopathology at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands, told The Huffington Post.

For the study, the researchers divided female participants into three groups. All the participants in three groups were given videos to watch before they were asked to perform certain tasks for the study.

While one group watched "female friendly erotica," another group watched extreme sports and the third group watched a video of a train, meant to elicit a neutral response, Huffington post reported.

Later they were asked to complete various disgusting-seeming actions, like drinking from a cup with an insect in it or wiping their hands with a used tissue. The participants did not know that the insect was made of plastic and the tissue was colored with ink to make it look used, Medical Xpress reported.

It was found that the participants who were from the "sexually aroused" group reported feeling lesser disgust and also successfully completed most of the tasks assigned to them when compared to participants from other groups. This suggested that sexual arousal has an effect on women's disgust response.

"These findings indicate that lack of sexual arousal may interfere with functional sex, as it may prevent the reduction of disgust and disgust-related avoidance tendencies," Borg said according to the report.

The findings of the study were published in the journal PLOS ONE.