Disgust plays a prominent role in several specific phobias besides fear. The intensity (arousal) of the phobia-related content affects performance in visual search. We suggest that the disgust sensitivity of a person could work similarly. Our study aimed to investigate the role of disgust and arousal in the perception of threatening content. Participants (N=52) were exposed to threatening (with medium or high arousal) and neutral pictures as task-irrelevant distractors while performing a primary visual search task in two blocks. Participants were randomly assigned into two groups. Between the blocks, they either saw a neutral video (neutral group) or a video that elicited disgust (disgust group). During the visual search task participants had to find the numbers in a matrix of white squares of varying sizes, in ascending order from 1 to 35. We measured the time taken to find the first number (finding nr1), and the time taken to find the first ten numbers (search time). In an explorative manner, we also measured the disgust sensitivity of participants. Regarding finding Nr1, our results show that participants were slower for high-arousal compared to medium-arousal and neutral images. Further, exposure to disgusting content resulted in faster response times. However, individuals with higher (compared to those with lower) disgust sensitivity were slower after viewing the disgusting video. Regarding search time, the video manipulation had no effect. However, the performance of individuals with higher (compared to lower) disgust sensitivity decreased. In sum, our results suggest that disgust has an effect mainly through arousal.