scholarly journals Disgust sensitivity and moral judgments of purity: The role of transgression weirdness

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fieke Maria Antoinet Wagemans ◽  
Mark John Brandt ◽  
Marcel Zeelenberg
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Disgust Sensitivity ◽  
Total N ◽  
Moral Domains ◽  
Moral Transgressions ◽  
The Relationship

Disgust sensitivity is more strongly related to moral judgments in the purity domain than to moral judgments in other moral domains. While this finding highlights the distinctiveness of moral domains, anti-modularity accounts suggest that the relationship is caused by the relative weirdness of purity transgressions and come to the conclusion that moral domains do not represent distinct mechanisms. In two studies (total N = 2,307), we test whether transgression weirdness accounts for disgust sensitivity’s stronger association with moral judgments of the purity as compared to other moral domains, but find little evidence for this claim. The relationship between disgust sensitivity and moral judgments of purity even remains when taking into account both (perceived) weirdness and (perceived) harmfulness of moral transgressions. These studies show that transgression weirdness and harmfulness cannot explain the disgust sensitivity–purity link, contradicting predictions following from popular anti-modularity accounts.

scholarly journals Disgust sensitivity is primarily associated with purity-based moral judgments

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fieke Maria Antoinet Wagemans ◽  
Mark John Brandt ◽  
Marcel Zeelenberg
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Personality Characteristics ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Moral Foundations Theory ◽  
Disgust Sensitivity ◽  
Moral Issues ◽  
Total N ◽  
Moral Domain ◽  
Moral Domains ◽  
Moral Condemnation

Individual differences in disgust sensitivity are associated with a range of judgments and attitudes related to the moral domain. Some perspectives suggest that the association between disgust sensitivity and moral judgments will be equally strong across all moral domains (purity, authority, loyalty, care, fairness, and liberty). Other perspectives predict that disgust sensitivity is primarily associated with judgments of specific moral domains (e.g., primarily purity). However, no study has systematically tested if disgust sensitivity is associated with moral judgments of the purity domain specifically, more generally to moral judgments of the binding moral domains, or to moral judgments of all of the moral domains equally. Across five studies (total N = 1104), we find consistent evidence for the notion that disgust sensitivity relates more strongly to moral condemnation of purity-based transgression (meta-analytic r = .40) than to moral condemnation of transgressions of any of the other domains (range meta-analytic r’s: .07 ̶ .27). Our findings are in line with predictions from Moral Foundations Theory, which predicts that personality characteristics like disgust sensitivity make people more sensitive to a certain set of moral issues.

scholarly journals The Role of Disgust in Homosexuality Judgments

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-83
Author(s):  
C. Nega ◽  
L. Pateraki ◽  
N. Saranti ◽  
A. Pasia
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Sexual Behavior ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Heterosexual Couples ◽  
Disgust Sensitivity ◽  
Implicit And Explicit ◽  
Neutral Conditions ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Theoretical Considerations

Background: There is a continuing debate on whether emotions underlie moral judgments. Recent studies have shown that emotions, and particularly disgust, play an important role in moral judgments. Objective: The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of induced disgust on implicit and explicit judgments of homosexuality and to examine the relationship between those judgments and disgust sensitivity. Method: Sixty-four college students were presented with a neutral or disgust inducing slideshow and a scenario describing homosexual or heterosexual couples French kissing in public. Implicit and explicit disapproval of public French kissing was measured along with disgust sensitivity. Results: The findings revealed that participants in the induced disgust condition showed greater implicit, but not explicit, disapproval of both homosexual and heterosexual public French kissing, compared to those in the neutral conditions. Homosexual public French kissing was implicitly judged more harshly than heterosexual public French kissing. With regard to disgust sensitivity, results revealed its contribution to implicit judgements. Conclusion: Present findings add to the existing literature by showing that disgust plays a role in the formation of implicit judgments of sexual behavior. Theoretical considerations accounting for the role of disgust in relation to the intentionality of moral actions are discussed.

scholarly journals Priming intuition disfavors instrumental harm but not impartial beneficence

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valerio Capraro ◽  
Jim Albert Charlton Everett ◽  
Brian D. Earp
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Dimensional Model ◽  
Total N ◽  
Two Dimensional Model ◽  
Do So

Understanding the cognitive underpinnings of moral judgment is one of most pressing problems in psychological science. Some highly-cited studies suggest that reliance on intuition decreases utilitarian (expected welfare maximizing) judgments in sacrificial moral dilemmas in which one has to decide whether to instrumentally harm (IH) one person to save a greater number of people. However, recent work suggests that such dilemmas are limited in that they fail to capture the positive, defining core of utilitarianism: commitment to impartial beneficence (IB). Accordingly, a new two-dimensional model of utilitarian judgment has been proposed that distinguishes IH and IB components. The role of intuition on this new model has not been studied. Does relying on intuition disfavor utilitarian choices only along the dimension of instrumental harm or does it also do so along the dimension of impartial beneficence? To answer this question, we conducted three studies (total N = 970, two preregistered) using conceptual priming of intuition versus deliberation on moral judgments. Our evidence converges on an interaction effect, with intuition decreasing utilitarian judgments in IH—as suggested by previous work—but failing to do so in IB. These findings bolster the recently proposed two-dimensional model of utilitarian moral judgment, and point to new avenues for future research.

scholarly journals I think, therefore I forgive: The role of reasoning in forgiving accidental harms

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Indrajeet Patil ◽  
Bastien Trémolière
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Cognitive Style ◽  
Time Pressure ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Cognitive Resources ◽  
Reasoning Ability ◽  
Total N ◽  
Moral Condemnation

People experience a strong conflict while condemning someone who brought about an accidental harm, her innocent intention exonerating her, but the harmful outcome incriminating her. In the present research (total N = 4879), we explore how reasoning ability and cognitive style relate to how people choose to resolve this conflict and judge the accidental harms. A first set of studies (1a-c) showed that individual differences in cognitive style predicted severity of judgments in fictitious accidental harms scenarios, with more able (or willing) reasoners being less harsh in their judgments. A second set of studies (2a-c) relied on experimental manipulations of cognitive load (Dot matrix, Time pressure, Mortality Salience manipulations), aiming to tax available cognitive resources to participants while evaluating third-party harmful behaviors. These manipulations, however, failed to modulate people’s moral judgments for accidental harms. We discuss the importance of individual differences in reasoning ability in the assessment of accidental harms, and we also propose potential explanations for the failure of our experimental manipulations to affect severity of moral condemnation.

scholarly journals The Mediating Roles of Disgust Sensitivity and Danger Expectancy in Relation to Hand Washing Behaviour

2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 175-190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan J. Thorpe ◽  
Julie Barnett ◽  
Katy Friend ◽  
Kate Nottingham
Keyword(s):  
Health Anxiety ◽  
Experimental Methodology ◽  
Disgust Sensitivity ◽  
Cognitive Measures ◽  
Obsessive Compulsive ◽  
Compulsive Disorder ◽  
Questionnaire Measure ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Further Development

Background: Recent interest in the role of vulnerability factors in obsessional washing has suggested that disgust sensitivity, danger expectancy and health anxiety may be of interest. Aims: This study explores the differential impact of these factors on both behavioural and cognitive measures of washing behaviour and is based on a replication of the Jones and Menzies (1997) experiment, during which participants immersed their hands in a noxious compound while rating themselves on a range of measures: the time they subsequently took to wash their hands was measured and danger expectancies were found to be the best predictor of this. Method: The present study added measures of disgust sensitivity and health anxiety to this experimental methodology while removing factors they found to be of little import to compulsive washing. Thirty non-clinical participants took part. Results: Results confirmed that disgust sensitivity was related to the behavioural measure of washing time, but that this relationship was almost entirely mediated by the danger expectancy concerning judgements of severity of consequent disease. However, a different pattern emerged when the outcome measure was questionnaire based: danger expectancy was not at all related to this. Disgust sensitivity mediated the relationship between health anxiety and scores on a questionnaire measure of washing compulsions. Interestingly, these scores were not related to the behavioural measure of washing time. Conclusions: The implications of these relationships to the further development of subtypes of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) are discussed.

scholarly journals Spacious Environments Make Us Tolerant—The Role of Emotion and Metaphor

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (19) ◽  
pp. 10530
Author(s):  
Chenjing Wu ◽  
Fuqun Liang ◽  
Xiaoling Liang ◽  
Chuangbing Huang ◽  
Hua Wang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Mediation Effect ◽  
Rating Score ◽  
Metaphor Processing ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
The Relationship

The physical environment plays an important role in moral cognition. Previous research has demonstrated that the physical environment affects individual moral judgment. Investigators have argued that the environment influences moral judgment through emotion and cognition, such as during metaphor processing. Following the intensification of urbanization and increases in population size, the phenomenon of a narrow environment has become more common. However, the relation between environmental spaciousness and moral judgment has not been thoroughly examined. We examined the effect of environmental spaciousness (spaciousness vs. narrowness) on moral judgments in Experiment 1 and Experiment 2. Results showed that participants report a higher rating score of moral judgment in more spacious environments compared with narrow environments. We further explored the roles of emotion and metaphor in the relation between environmental spaciousness and moral judgments. We found support for a partial mediation effect of emotion in the relationship between environmental spaciousness and moral judgment. The results also supported an association between the concept of spaciousness and tolerant cognition. Spacious environments may elicit positive emotions and more tolerant cognition, which in turn influences moral judgment. These results provide new evidence for the influence of the environment on moral judgments, and more attention may be warranted to incorporate this relationship in environmental design.

scholarly journals Reliance on emotion promotes belief in fake news

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cameron Martel ◽  
Gordon Pennycook ◽  
David Gertler Rand
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Processing ◽  
Prior Work ◽  
Fake News ◽  
Total N ◽  
Unique Role ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Shed Light

What is the role of emotion in susceptibility to believing fake news? Prior work on the psychology of misinformation has focused primarily on the extent to which reason and deliberation hinder versus help the formation of accurate beliefs. Several studies have suggested that people who engage in more reasoning are less likely to fall for fake news. However, the role of reliance on emotion in belief in fake news remains unclear. To shed light on this issue, we explored the relationship between experiencing specific emotions and believing fake news (Study 1; N = 409). We found that across a wide range of specific emotions, heightened emotionality was predictive of increased belief in fake (but not real) news. Then, in Study 2, we measured and manipulated reliance on emotion versus reason across four experiments (total N = 3884). We found both correlational and causal evidence that reliance on emotion increases belief in fake news: Self-reported use of emotion was positively associated with belief in fake (but not real) news, and inducing reliance on emotion resulted in greater belief in fake (but not real) news stories compared to a control or to inducing reliance on reason. These results shed light on the unique role that emotional processing may play in susceptibility to fake news.

scholarly journals The Big Role of Authority, Sanctity, and Modern Myths About Sexual Aggression in Blaming the Rape Victims: A Study on Culture of Honor

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mazyar Bagherian Miandoab ◽  
Zohreh Hashemi Dezaki ◽  
Bahare Bahmani
Keyword(s):  
Social Desirability ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Foundations ◽  
Victim Blaming ◽  
Rape Victims ◽  
Moral Foundation ◽  
Culture Of Honor ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Moderating Role

According to Moral Foundation Theory, people rely on five intuitive-based foundations in their moral judgments. These foundations are divided into two clusters: Individualizing foundations (Care and Fairness) and Binding foundations (Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity). In this study, the authors investigated the relationship between moral foundations and AMMSA with victim-blaming and the moderating role of social desirability in Iranian Culture. Consistent with previous findings, victim-blaming was best predicted by AMMSA. Regarding moral foundations, victim-blaming was positively predicted by Authority and Sanctity and negatively predicted by Fairness. Although the best predictor of victim-blaming was AMMSA, Authority and Sanctity had a marginal difference with AMMSA in predicting victim-blaming. Analyses also showed that higher levels of Social Desirability moderated the Care foundation. Moreover, while there was no difference in victim-blaming among men and women, men were more accepting of AMMSA. With attention to previous literature, findings are discussed to gain a better understanding of the interaction between moral foundations and victim-blaming in various cultural contexts.

Role of clays in the diagenetic history of nitrogen and boron in the Carboniferous of Donbas (Ukraine)

Clay Minerals ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 561-582 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Środoń ◽  
M. Paszkowski
Keyword(s):  
Organic Matter ◽  
Chemical Analysis ◽  
Boron Content ◽  
Bulk Rock ◽  
Total N ◽  
History Of ◽  
Diagenetic History ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Additional Fixation

AbstractThe evolution of the nitrogen and boron content of shales during diagenesis and anchimetamorphism was studied in the Carboniferous rocks of Donbas by means of the bulk rock chemical analysis and the XRD quantification of mineral composition, aided by CEC and EGME sorption measurements. The contributions of the organic-bound N and B were taken into account, based on the literature data (B) and on the relationship established in the course of this study (N). 28–98% of the total N and 80–100% of the total B are contained in the mineral fraction of the investigated shales.The mineral nitrogen is located mostly in illite and accounts for 3 to 64% of the sites available for its fixation in 1Md illite. The fixation of N by illite seems to diminish in the course of diagenesis, but additional fixation occurs in newly formed 2M1 illite during the anchimetamorphic stage. The volume of N contained in illite in most samples greatly surpasses the N available locally from the organic matter contained in shale. Modelling indicates that the measured level of N for K substitution in illite corresponds to the capture in 30 vol.% of shale of all N released in a basin containing 5 vol.% of coal.Boron is held predominantly by the 1Md fraction (illite+smectite). During diagenesis boron is redistributed into the 1Md illite, and during anchimetamorphism it is released from the 1Md illite and incorporated into new 2M1 illite. No indication of the net enrichment of pore water in B due to the clay alteration process was found.

scholarly journals Disease and Disapproval: COVID-19 Concern is Related to Greater Moral Condemnation

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 147470492110215
Author(s):  
Robert K. Henderson ◽  
Simone Schnall
Keyword(s):  
Infectious Disease ◽  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Orientation ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Health Concern ◽  
Rational Thought ◽  
Moral Condemnation ◽  
Moral Transgressions

Prior research has indicated that disease threat and disgust are associated with harsher moral condemnation. We investigated the role of a specific, highly salient health concern, namely the spread of the coronavirus, and associated COVID-19 disease, on moral disapproval. We hypothesized that individuals who report greater subjective worry about COVID-19 would be more sensitive to moral transgressions. Across three studies ( N = 913), conducted March-May 2020 as the pandemic started to unfold in the United States, we found that individuals who were worried about contracting the infectious disease made harsher moral judgments than those who were relatively less worried. This effect was not restricted to transgressions involving purity, but extended to transgressions involving harm, fairness, authority, and loyalty, and remained when controlling for political orientation. Furthermore, for Studies 1 and 2 the effect also was robust when taking into account the contamination subscale of the Disgust Scale–Revised. These findings add to the growing literature that concrete threats to health can play a role in abstract moral considerations, supporting the notion that judgments of wrongdoing are not based on rational thought alone.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document