Body Odor Disgust sensitivity predicts stronger moral harshness towards moral violations of purity.

Detecting pathogen threats and avoiding disease is fundamental to human survival. The Behavioral Immune System (BIS) framework outlines a set of psychological functions that may have evolved for this purpose. Disgust is a core emotion that plays a pivotal role in the BIS, as it activates the behavioral avoidance motives that prevent people from being in contact with pathogens. To date, there has been little agreement on how disgust sensitivity might underlie moral judgments. Here, we investigated moral violations of “purity” (assumed to elicit disgust) and violations of “harm” (assumed to elicit anger). We hypothesized that individual differences in BIS-related traits would be associated with greater disgust (vs. anger) reactivity to, and greater condemnation of purity (vs. harm) violations. The study was pre-registered (https://osf.io/57nm8/). Participants (N = 632) had to rate scenarios concerning moral wrongness or inappropriateness and regarding disgust and anger. To measure individual differences in the activation of the BIS, we used our recently developed Body Odor Disgust Scale (BODS), a BIS-related trait measure that assesses individual differences in feeling disgusted by body odors. In line with our predictions, we found that scores on the BODS relate more strongly to affective reactions to Purity, as compared to Harm, violations. In addition, BODS relates more strongly to Moral condemnation than to perceived Inappropriateness of an action, and to the condemnation of Purity violations as compared to Harm violations. These results suggest that the BIS is involved in moral judgment, although to some extent this role seems to be specific for violations of “moral purity”, a concept that might be rooted in disease avoidance. Data and scripts to analyze the data are available on the Open Science Framework (OSF) repository: https://osf.io/tk4x5/. Planned analyses are available at https://osf.io/x6g3u/

The Effect of Exercise and Distraction on Blood Pressure Recovery Following an Anger-Provoking Stressor in Normotensive Young Adults

Ruminating about a prior anger provoking event is found to elevate blood pressure (BP) and delay BP recovery. Delayed BP recovery may be associated with increased risk of hypertension. Interventions that improve BP recovery may be beneficial for cardiovascular health. The purposes of this study were to evaluate the influence of rumination and anger on BP reactivity and recovery, to compare the effect of an exercise intervention or distraction intervention on BP recovery and to explore if exercise improved BP recovery by distracting participants from stressor-related rumination and anger. Healthy, normotensive participants (n = 79, mean age 22.2 ± 4.0 years) underwent an anger-recall interview stressor task, 3 min of exercise (walking), distraction (reading) or no-intervention (quiet sitting) and a 15 min recovery period. State anger reactivity was associated with Δ diastolic (D) BP reactivity and approached significance with Δ systolic (S) BP reactivity. Trait rumination was associated with greater SBP during recovery. Δ SBP recovery did not differ between the exercise, distraction and no-intervention groups. Although there were no differences in Δ DBP recovery between the exercise and no-intervention groups, distraction improved Δ DBP recovery compared to the exercise intervention but not the no-intervention. The proportion of anger-related thoughts (state rumination) in the exercise group did not differ from the distraction or no-intervention groups. However, a smaller proportion of participants in the distraction intervention reported an anger-related thought during recovery compared to the no-intervention group with 76% of their thoughts relating to the provided distraction. Overall, post-stressor exercise was not found to improve BP recovery while reading was effective at distracting individuals from angry thoughts (state rumination) but had no effect on BP compared to no-intervention.

Emerging Developmental Pathways to ADHD: Possible Path Markers in Early Infancy

Sixty-six male infants participating in the Ben-Gurion Infant Development Study of familial risk for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)were assessed at 7 months of age using observational and mother report measures. Risk for ADHD was based on ADHD symptoms in the father. Infants whose fathers had seven or more symptoms formed the ADHD risk group; infants whose fathers had three or less symptoms formed the comparison group. The ADHD risk group significantly differed from the comparison group on measures of interest, anger, and activity level and showed less interest in block play and more anger reactivity but less directed anger in a barrier task. According to mother report, the ADHD risk group had higher levels of activity than the comparison group. Measures of neonatal immaturity and activity were related to behavior at 7 months. The findings suggest that possible developmental pathways to ADHD may be emerging in early infancy.