Disgust as embodied moral judgment

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

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.

Disgust Sensitivity Among Women During the COVID-19 Outbreak

The emotion of disgust is suggested to be an adaptation that evolved to keep us away from sources of infection. Therefore, individuals from populations with greater pathogen stress should have a greater disgust sensitivity. However, current evidence for a positive relationship between disgust sensitivity and the intensity of infectious diseases in the environment is limited. We tested whether disgust and contamination sensitivity changed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Disgust was assessed in 984 women in 2017 (before pandemic) and 633 women in 2020 (during pandemic) by a set of photographs depicting sources of infection and Pathogen and Moral of Three-Domain Disgust Scale. Further, contamination sensitivity among participants in two waves was measured by Contamination Obsessions and Washing Compulsions Subscale of Padua Inventory. State anxiety was measured with the Polish adaptation of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) only during the second wave of data collection. Women from the COVID-19 pandemic group assessed the photographs depicting sources of infection as more disgusting, scoring higher on Padua Inventory, but lower on Moral Disgust Domain as compared to women from before the pandemic. In addition, anxiety levels during pandemic positively correlated with scores from Pathogen Disgust Domain, Padua Inventory, and the ratings of the photographs. The participants of the study scored higher in state anxiety than the norms determined for the Polish population. Summarizing, we present evidence for differences in individual levels of disgust sensitivity in relation to pathogen stress, supporting the idea that disgust evolved to serve as protection from pathogens.

Leveraging individual differences to understand grounded procedures

We applaud the goals and execution of the target article, but note that individual differences do not receive much attention. This is a shortcoming because individual differences can play a vital role in theory testing. In our commentary, we describe programs of research of this type and also apply similar thinking to the mechanisms proposed in the target article.

Decision-Making in the Human-Machine Interface

If our choices make us who we are, then what does that mean when these choices are made in the human-machine interface? Developing a clear understanding of how human decision making is influenced by automated systems in the environment is critical because, as human-machine interfaces and assistive robotics become even more ubiquitous in everyday life, many daily decisions will be an emergent result of the interactions between the human and the machine – not stemming solely from the human. For example, choices can be influenced by the relative locations and motor costs of the response options, as well as by the timing of the response prompts. In drift diffusion model simulations of response-prompt timing manipulations, we find that it is only relatively equibiased choices that will be successfully influenced by this kind of perturbation. However, with drift diffusion model simulations of motor cost manipulations, we find that even relatively biased choices can still show some influence of the perturbation. We report the results of a two-alternative forced-choice experiment with a computer mouse modified to have a subtle velocity bias in a pre-determined direction for each trial, inducing an increased motor cost to move the cursor away from the pre-designated target direction. With queries that have each been normed in advance to be equibiased in people’s preferences, the participant will often begin their mouse movement before their cognitive choice has been finalized, and the directional bias in the mouse velocity exerts a small but significant influence on their final choice. With queries that are not equibiased, a similar influence is observed. By exploring the synergies that are developed between humans and machines and tracking their temporal dynamics, this work aims to provide insight into our evolving decisions.

The Role of Disgust and Threat in Contamination-Related Obsessive–Compulsive Disorder

Theoretical models suggest that the emotion disgust or threat overestimates are important in the aetiology and maintenance of contamination-based obsessive–compulsive disorder. In the current study, both threat and disgust were manipulated and 115 non-clinical participants (mean age 20.46 years, 94 females) were randomly allocated to one of four conditions: high-disgust/low-threat (n = 29), high-disgust/high-threat (n = 29), low-disgust/low-threat (n = 27), and low-disgust/high-threat (n = 30). Participants completed a hierarchical Behavioural Avoidance Task (BAT). Those in the high-threat and high-disgust conditions completed less BAT steps and showed more latency to begin each step than those in the low-threat and low-disgust conditions. A significant interaction effect was observed for the high-disgust/high-threat condition as significantly more task avoidance was found. However, handwashing duration was not significantly different between the high and low-disgust conditions or the high and low-threat conditions. The overall low mean washing duration of 30 s possibly due to the testing conditions and/or the ethnic heterogeneity of the sample may account for these results. There were also no significant differences in the level of anxiety for participants in the high-threat compared with the low-threat conditions. It is possible that anxiety remained relatively low across conditions as a result of the graduated BAT. Future research and theoretical and clinical implications are discussed.

Psychodynamic and sociopolitical predictors of COVID Distress and Gravity

This study examined the relationship between attachment style and fear of contamination during the COVID-19 pandemic, hypothesizing that anxiously attached participants would be more distressed when their safe space was threatened by someone leaving and returning. During May 2020, n = 355 participants provided demographics, personality, health anxiety scores, attachment styles, political ideology, and attitudes towards the pandemic. In both social media and MTurk subsamples (but not in a subsample from a ListServ of professional psychologists), anxious attachment was a significant predictor of distress above and beyond personality and health anxiety. In addition, political ideology emerged as a consistent predictor of perceptions of the seriousness of COVID-19, even holding the other predictors constant. Understanding an individual's attachment style may be helpful in working with them in their trauma. This research also contributes to early empirical evidence for the impact of political ideology on self-reported attitudes and behaviors during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The roles of disgust and harm perception in political attitude moralization

What causes people to see their political attitudes in a moral light? One answer is that attitude moralization results from associating one's attitude stance with feelings of disgust. To test the possibility that disgust moralizes, the current study used a high-powered preregistered design looking at within-person change in moral conviction paired with an experimental manipulation of disgust or anger (versus control). Results from the preregistered analyses found that we successfully induced anger but not disgust; however, our manipulation had no effect on moral conviction. Additional exploratory analyses investigating whether emotion and harm predicted increases in moral conviction over time found that neither disgust, anger, nor sadness had an effect on moralization, whereas perceptions of harm did predict moralization. Our findings are discussed in terms of their implications for current theory and research into attitude moralization.

The Consistency Effects of the Clean Metaphor of Moral Concept and Dirty Metaphor of Immoral Concept

Abstract. Morality is clean, while immorality is dirty, and these metaphors use concrete clean and dirty experiences to express moral and immoral concepts; specifically, they are the clean metaphor of moral concept and dirty metaphor of immoral concept. The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to explore the consistency effects of the clean metaphor of moral concept and dirty metaphor of immoral concept, the experiment recorded the reaction times (RTs) and ERP waves in a metaphor consistency condition and a metaphor inconsistency condition. The behavioral results showed that the RTs in the metaphor consistency condition were significantly faster than the RTs in the metaphor inconsistency condition. The ERP results showed that the P300, N400, and late negative component (LNC) amplitudes were higher in the metaphor inconsistency condition than in the metaphor consistency condition.

Does inappropriate behavior hurt or stink? The interplay between neural representations of somatic experiences and moral decisions

Embodied models suggest that moral judgments are strongly intertwined with first-hand somatic experiences, with some pointing to disgust, and others arguing for a role of pain/harm. Both disgust and pain are unpleasant, arousing experiences, with strong relevance for survival, but with distinctive sensory qualities and neural channels. Hence, it is unclear whether moral cognition interacts with sensory-specific properties of one somatic experience or with supramodal dimensions common to both. Across two experiments, participants evaluated ethical dilemmas and subsequently were exposed to disgusting (olfactory) or painful (thermal) stimulations of matched unpleasantness. We found that moral scenarios enhanced physiological and neural activity to subsequent disgust (but not pain), as further supported by an independently validated whole-brain signature of olfaction. This effect was mediated by activity in the posterior cingulate cortex triggered by dilemma judgments. Our results thus speak in favor of an association between moral cognition and sensory-specific properties of disgust.

Hunger Bias or Gut Instinct? Responses to Judgments of Harm Depending on Visceral State Versus Intuitive Decision-Making

Empirical investigation into the emotional and physiological processes that shape moral decision-making is vast and growing. Yet, relatively less attention has been paid to measures of interoception in morality research despite its centrality in both emotional and physiological processes. Hunger and thirst represent two everyday interoceptive states, and hunger, in particular, has been shown to be influential for moral decision-making in numerous studies. It is possible that a tendency to focus on internal sensations interoceptive sensibility (IS), as well as the emotional and physiological states associated with visceral states, could be important in the relationships between hunger, thirst, and moral judgments. This cross-sectional online research (n = 154) explored whether IS, hunger, thirst, and emotional state influenced appropriateness and acceptability judgments of harm. The moral dilemma stimuli used allowed the independent calculation of (1) people's tendency to avoid harmful action at all costs and (2) people's tendency to maximize outcomes that benefit the greater good. The Cognitive Reflection Task (CRT) was implemented to determine whether an ability to override intuitive responses to counterintuitive problems predicted harm-based moral judgments, as found previously. Hunger bias, independent of IS and emotional state, was influential for non-profitable acceptability judgments of harmful actions. Contrary to dual-process perspectives, a novel finding was that more intuitive responses on the CRT predicted a reduced aversion to harmful actions that was indirectly associated with IS. We suggest that IS may indicate people's vulnerability to cognitive miserliness on the CRT task and reduced deliberation of moral dilemma stimuli. The framing of moral dilemmatic questions to encourage allocentric (acceptability questions) versus egocentric perspectives (appropriateness questions) could explain the divergence between hunger bias and intuitive decision-making for predicting these judgments, respectively. The findings are discussed in relation to dual-process accounts of harm-based moral judgments and evidence linking visceral experiences to harm aversion and moral decision-making.

Moral Judgments

Research on morality has increased rapidly over the past 10 years. At the center of this research are moral judgments-evaluative judgments that a perceiver makes in response to a moral norm violation. But there is substantial diversity in what has been called moral judgment. This article offers a framework that distinguishes, theoretically and empirically, four classes of moral judgment: evaluations, norm judgments, moral wrongness judgments, and blame judgments. These judgments differ in their typical objects, the information they process, their speed, and their social functions. The framework presented here organizes the extensive literature and provides fresh perspectives on measurement, the nature of moral intuitions, the status of moral dumbfounding, and the prospects of dual-process models of moral judgment. It also identifies omitted questions and sets the stage for a broader theory of moral judgment, which the coming decades may bring forth.

Modulating disgust in mental contamination: Experimental evidence for the role of disgust

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Disgust has been associated with mental contamination (MC), although the evidence has hitherto been nonexperimental. Furthermore, strategies that can target both disgust and MC have not been well explored. We investigated the role of disgust in MC by inducing disgust via olfaction within the "dirty kiss" paradigm and conversely, to see if pairing pleasant olfactory stimulus during re-exposure, based on counterconditioning, can reduce MC. We also examined whether disgust constructs (propensity and sensitivity) and trait MC are associated with state MC arising from the "dirty kiss".

METHODS

MC was first evoked using the "dirty kiss" paradigm, in which participants (N = 90) visualized receiving a non-consensual kiss from a physically dirty man (time 1). After a break, participants repeated the "dirty kiss" task in a room that was scented to smell either disgusting, pleasant or neutral (time 2). Participants completed measures of disgust and trait MC after the experiment.

RESULTS

Participants in the disgust condition reported increased feelings of dirtiness at time 2. Disgust propensity predicted feelings of dirtiness at time 1. Disgust sensitivity and trait MC were not associated with state MC indices.

LIMITATIONS

The use of a non-clinical female sample, extraneous factors during the break and contextual factors arising from room change at time 2 are some potential limitations.

CONCLUSIONS

Induced disgust within a MC paradigm resulted in increased feelings of dirtiness, suggestive of disgust-based emotional reasoning. Pairing pleasant olfactory stimulus was not effective at attenuating MC or disgust.

Incidental disgust does not cause moral condemnation of neutral actions

Emotivism in moral psychology holds that making moral judgements is at least partly an affective process. Three emotivist hypotheses can be distinguished: the elicitation hypothesis (that moral transgressions elicit emotions); the amplification hypothesis (that disgust amplifies moral judgments); and the moralisation hypothesis (that affect moralises the non-moral). Even though the moralisation hypothesis is the strongest and most radical form of emotivism, it has not been systematically experimentally tested. Most previous studies have used as stimuli morally wrong actions, and thus they cannot answer whether disgust is sufficient to moralise an otherwise neutral action. In Experiment 1 (N = 87) we tested the effect of incidental disgust on morally neutral scenarios, and in Experiment 2 (N = 510) the differential effect of disgust on neutral and wrong scenarios. The results did not support either the moralisation or the amplification hypothesis. Instead, Bayesian analyses provided substantial evidence for the null hypothesis that incidental disgust does not affect moral ratings. The results are in line with a recent meta-analysis suggesting that disgust has no effect on moral ratings.

The BDNF Val66Met polymorphism impacts victim's moral emotions following interpersonal transgression

Immoral behaviors make individuals abominate and punish transgressors. Inspired by the associations between the Val66Met polymorphism of brain-derived neurotropic factor (BDNF) gene and emotional responses following negative events, we investigated whether this polymorphism was also associated moral emotions such as punishment and forgiveness following interpersonal transgression. To do so, we categorized 340 individuals according to the BDNF Val66Met and assessed moral emotions by using 12 hypothetic scenarios in different conditions of intention and interpersonal consequence. The results indicated that this polymorphism was significantly associated with moral aversion and punishment towards transgressors. Victims with the Val/Val genotype expressed less aversion and punishment than the Met carriers, regardless of intention and interpersonal consequence. Moreover, this polymorphism was associated with forgiveness. Victims with the Val/Val genotype expressed more forgiveness than the Met carriers. Taken together, these findings highlight the importance of the BDNF Val66Met to moral emotions.

Odour-Evoked Memory in Dogs: Do Odours Help to Retrieve Memories of Food Location?

Simple Summary

The ability of odors to evoke past memories has been widely reported in humans. Although olfaction is generally considered as the most important sense in dogs, little is known about its relationship with memory in this species. To investigate this issue, we trained dogs to memorize the location of five rewards while a specific odor (i.e., vanilla) was dispersed in the environment. After 24 h delay, dogs were divided in three groups, which performed two trials of the same spatial task in different conditions. The first group received a control odor (i.e., apple) in the first trial and the vanilla odor in the second trial; vice versa, the second group was exposed to the vanilla odor in the first test and to the apple odor in the second one. The third group, instead, performed the tests with no odors. We found that the exposure to vanilla odor significantly improved dogs’ performance in the spatial task, suggesting that the odor aided dogs to recall specific and detailed memories originally formed in its presence.

Abstract

The ability of odors to spontaneously trigger specific memories has been widely demonstrated in humans. Although increasing evidence support the role of olfaction on dogs’ emotions and cognitive processes, very little research has been conducted on its relationship with memory in this species. The present study aimed at investigating the role of olfaction in the recall of detailed memories originally formed in the presence of a specific odor (i.e., vanilla). To test this, three groups of participants were trained with the same spatial learning task while a specific odor (i.e., vanilla) was dispersed in the testing room. Subjects were then divided in three experimental groups and after 24 h delay, they were presented with the same spatial task. The first group (Group 1) performed the task in the presence of a novel odor (i.e., control), whereas the second (Group 2) and the third group (Group 3) carried out the test in the presence of the vanilla odor and no odor (Group 3), respectively. After a brief delay, the test was presented again to the three groups of dogs: subjects of Group 1 were now tested in the presence of the vanilla odor, whereas the Group 2 was tested with the control odor. The Group 3 received no odor in both tests. A significant improvement of dogs’ performance was registered in the control-vanilla odors condition (Group 1), suggesting that the exposure to the odor presented at the encoding time would prompt the recall of spatial memories in dogs.

It's not you, it's me - disgust sensitivity towards body odor in deaf and blind individuals

Disgust might be elicited by various sensory channels, including the sense of smell. It has been previously demonstrated that unpleasant odors emitted by an external source are more disgusting than those emitted by oneself (the source effect). As disgust's main purpose is to help organisms avoid potentially dangerous, contaminating objects, individuals with visual or hearing sensory impairment (thus, with an impeded ability to detect cues indicating pathogen threat) might have developed an increased levels of olfactory disgust sensitivity (modality compensation in disgust sensitivity). We set out to investigate disgust sensitivity in olfaction using the Body Odor Disgust Scale (BODS) on a large sample of 74 deaf and 98 blind participants, with comparison to control groups without sensory impairment (N = 199 in total). The results did not support the hypothesis of modality compensation in disgust sensitivity. Contrary to previous research, neither sex nor age influenced the outcomes. Evidence for the source effect was found. Acquired data are interpreted in the light of social desirability. The emphasis put on the olfaction by blind and deaf individuals is discussed.

Grounded procedures: A proximate mechanism for the psychology of cleansing and other physical actions

Experimental work has revealed causal links between physical cleansing and various psychological variables. Empirically, how robust are they? Theoretically, how do they operate? Major prevailing accounts focus on morality or disgust, capturing a subset of cleansing effects, but cannot easily handle cleansing effects in non-moral, non-disgusting contexts. Building on grounded views on cognitive processes and known properties of mental procedures, we propose grounded procedures of separation as a proximate mechanism underlying cleansing effects. This account differs from prevailing accounts in terms of explanatory kind, interpretive parsimony, and predictive scope. Its unique and falsifiable predictions have received empirical support: Cleansing attenuates or eliminates otherwise observed influences of prior events (1) across domains and (2) across valences. (3) Cleansing manipulations produce stronger effects the more strongly they engage sensorimotor capacities. (4) Reversing the causal arrow, motivation for cleansing is triggered more readily by negative than positive entities. (5) Conceptually similar effects extend to other physical actions of separation. On the flipside, grounded procedures of connection are also observed. Together, separation and connection organize prior findings relevant to multiple perspectives (e.g., conceptual metaphor, sympathetic magic) and open up new questions. Their predictions are more generalizable than the specific mappings in conceptual metaphors, but more fine-grained than the broad assumptions of grounded cognition. This intermediate level of analysis sheds light on the interplay between mental and physical processes.

Interpretation bias and contamination-based obsessive-compulsive symptoms influence emotional intensity related to disgust and fear

Biased processing of disgust-related stimuli is increasingly discussed in addition to fear-related processing as a maintenance factor for contamination-based obsessive-compulsive disorder (C-OCD). However, the differential impact of fear and disgust on biased processing in C-OCD is not yet completely understood. Because it is difficult to distinguish the two emotions in self-report assessment by directly addressing the specific emotions, a text paragraph-based interpretation bias paradigm was applied to more implicitly assess emotions. For the text-based interpretation bias paradigm, disgust-related, fear-related, disgust-fear-ambiguous and neutral text paragraphs describing everyday life situations were developed and validated in a pre-study (N = 205). Fifty-nine healthy participants watched either disgust- or fear-inducing movies and afterwards rated their experienced emotional response to the text paragraphs. The results show that fear and disgust components of an emotional response to mixed-emotional situations are strongly influenced by the situational context, and across the levels of trait contamination fear people did not differ in their fear experiences to everyday situations (which was overall strong), but in their disgust experiences. These findings highlight the strength of situational context on interpretation bias for mixed-emotional disorders and the important role of disgust for C-OCD.

Does the "Morning Morality Effect" Apply to Prehospital Anaesthesiologists? An Investigation into Diurnal Changes in Ethical Behaviour

The “morning morality effect”—the alleged phenomenon that people are more likely to act in unethical ways in the afternoon when they are tired and have less self-control than in the morning—may well be expected to influence prehospital anaesthesiologist manning mobile emergency care units (MECUs). The working conditions of these units routinely entail fatigue, hunger, sleep deprivation and other physical or emotional conditions that might make prehospital units predisposed to exhibit the “morning morality effect”. We investigated whether this is in fact the case by looking at the distribution of patient transports to hospital with and without physician escort late at night at the end of the shift as a surrogate marker for changing thresholds in ethical behaviour. All missions over a period of 11 years in the MECU in Odense were reviewed. Physician-escorted transports to hospital were compared with non-physician-escorted transports during daytime, evening, and night-time (which correlates with time on the 24 h shifts). In total, 26,883 patients were transported to hospital following treatment by the MECU. Of these, 27.4% (26.9%–27.9%) were escorted to the hospital. The ratio of patient transports to hospital with and without physician escort during the three periods of the day did not differ (p = 1.00). We found no evidence of changes in admission patterns over the day. Thus, no evidence of the expected “morning morality effect” could be found in a prehospital physician-manned emergency care unit.

Disgust selectively dampens value-independent risk-taking for potential gains

Despite intricate interactions between emotion and decision making, the underlying cognitive mechanisms that govern their relationship remain elusive. Recent theoretical and empirical advances suggest that preferences in risky decision making can arise from the computation of subjective utility (value-dependent) or direct approach-avoidance action tendencies (value-independent). Here, 48 participants performed two gambling tasks (accept/reject and choice selection tasks) under the emotion manipulation (neutral versus disgust) to investigate how decision context and emotion may influence risk preference via the value-dependent and -independent pathways. The results showed that the decision context affected the degree to which both value-dependent and -independent systems were engaged. Crucially, however, the disgust emotion had a selective effect on participants' choices in the accept/reject task. Furthermore, computational analyses revealed that this specific effect resulted from a reduced propensity to gamble for potential gains by engaging only the value-independent system. These results indicate dissociative effects of decision context and emotion and suggest a specific route by which disgust influences choice preference in risky decision making.

On the Origin of Shame: Does Shame Emerge From an Evolved Disease-Avoidance Architecture?

Shame and disgust are believed to be evolved psychological solutions to different adaptive challenges. Shame is thought to promote the maintenance of social hierarchies (Gilbert, 1997; Fessler, 2004), whereas disgust is believed to encourage disease avoidance (Curtis et al., 2004; Oaten et al., 2009). Although shame and disgust are often treated as orthogonal emotions, they share some important similarities. Both involve bodily concerns, are described as moral emotions, and encourage avoidance of social interaction. The purpose of the current research was to examine whether shame is uniquely related to disgust and pathogen avoidance. To rule out an association due to the negative valence of both emotions, guilt was also examined. In Study 1, disgust sensitivity and fear of contamination were positively correlated with shame, but not guilt, even after controlling for negative affect. In Study 2, a disgust induction increased shame, but not guilt, for individuals who were sensitive to disgust. The current research provides preliminary evidence for unique relation between shame and disgust.

Reexamining the Effect of Gustatory Disgust on Moral Judgment: A Multilab Direct Replication of Eskine, Kacinik, and Prinz (2011)

Eskine, Kacinik, and Prinz’s (2011) influential experiment demonstrated that gustatory disgust triggers a heightened sense of moral wrongness. We report a large-scale multisite direct replication of this study conducted by labs in the Collaborative Replications and Education Project. Subjects in each sample were randomly assigned to one of three beverage conditions: bitter (disgusting), control (neutral), or sweet. Then, subjects made a series of judgments about the moral wrongness of the behavior depicted in six vignettes. In the original study ( N = 57), drinking the bitter beverage led to higher ratings of moral wrongness than did drinking the control or sweet beverage; a contrast between the bitter condition and the other two conditions was significant among conservative ( n = 19) but not liberal ( n = 25) subjects. In the current project, random-effects meta-analyses across all subjects ( N = 1,137, k = 11 studies), conservative subjects ( n = 142, k = 5), and liberal subjects ( n = 635, k = 9) revealed standardized overall effect sizes across replications that were smaller than reported in the original study. Some were in the opposite of the predicted direction; all had 95% confidence intervals containing zero, and all were smaller than the effect size the original authors could have meaningfully detected. Results of linear mixed-effects regressions revealed that drinking the bitter beverage led to higher ratings of moral wrongness than did drinking the control beverage but not the sweet beverage. Bayes factor tests revealed greater relative support for the null than for the replication hypothesis. The overall pattern provides little to no support for the theory that physical disgust via taste perception harshens judgments of moral wrongness.

Omission and Compromise: The Sacredness of Moral Foundations in Political Groups in Italy

Sacred values are moral foundations that may make public and political debates among groups hard to resolve. A taboo trade-off framework offers the opportunity of measuring the inviolability and the "sacralization" of moral foundations. In this study, moral foundations in a taboo trade-off framework were assessed in a convenience sample of Italians (N = 224) using a new measure to assess sacred values, the Omission as a Compromise on Moral Foundations scale (OC-MF). The OC-MF measures the willingness of individuals to omit moral foundations in exchange for money. It was predicted that Italian center and left-wing participants would be less willing to compromise individualizing moral foundations as opposed to binding ones, and that center and right-wing participants would be less willing to compromise on binding moral foundations than left-wing participants. Confirmatory Factor Analyses demonstrated the two-factor structure of the OC-MF: individualizing and binding. As predicted, Repeated Measures Anova showed that political orientation was related with differential adoptions of moral foundations as sacred values, with center and left-wing participants refusing to compromise more on individualizing than on binding moral foundations. Moreover, left-wing participants were more willing to compromise on binding moral foundations than center and right-wing participants. The OC-MF shows the hypothesized differences between Italian political groups and offers a new understanding of moral reasoning. These findings provide opportunities for improving ideological debates concerning sacred values.

Folk beliefs about the relationships anger and disgust have with moral disapproval

Theories that view emotions as being related in some way to moral judgments suggest that condemning moral emotions should, at a minimum, be understood by laypeople to coincide with judgments of moral disapproval. Seven studies (total N = 826) tested the extent to which anger and disgust align with this criterion. We observed that while anger is understood to be strongly related to moral disapproval of people's actions and character, disgust is not (Studies 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b, and 3), and that, in contexts where disgust expressions are thought to coincide somewhat with moral disapproval, part of the reason is that the expression is perceived as anger (Study 4). Expressions of sadness are also construed as communicating anger in such contexts (Study 5). We discuss our findings in terms of rethinking how we should consider disgust as a moral emotion.

Easy on the mind, easy on the wrongdoer? No evidence for perceptual fluency effects on moral wrongness ratings

Processing fluency-the subjective ease of information processing-influences a variety of judgments (e.g., judgments of familiarity, liking, and truth). A study by Laham, Alter, and Goodwin (2009) suggests that this is also true for moral judgments. More specifically, the authors found that discrepant perceptual fluency mitigates moral wrongness ratings. In five studies (total N = 694), we tested the replicability of this finding for different kinds of scenarios (moral versus conventional transgressions) and different perceptual fluency manipulations. In Studies 1a and 1b we manipulated fluency by text background, in Studies 2a and 2b by font type, and in Study 3 by word spaces. Critically, none of the studies replicated Laham et al.'s discrepant fluency effect on moral wrongness ratings. In turn, we found that moral wrongness ratings were strongly affected by participants' emotional responses to the scenarios. Taken together, the findings of our five studies cast very strong doubt on perceptual fluency effects on moral judgments.

Sense of Personal Control Intensifies Moral Judgments of Others' Actions

Recent research in moral psychology has highlighted how the current internal states of observers can influence their moral judgments of others' actions. In this article, we argue that an important internal state that serves such a function is the sense of control one has over one's own actions. Across four studies, we show that an individual's own current sense of control is positively associated with the intensity of moral judgments of the actions of others. We also show that this effect extends not only to judgments of rightness and wrongness (Study 1), but also to assignments of reward and punishment (Study 2). Finally, we demonstrate that this effect is based on the current experience of control by showing a moderation of the effect via motivational states (promotion; prevention) that either lead one to incorporate or disregard internal states when making judgments (Study 3) and by subtly manipulating participants' sense of control (Study 4).

Are we Ready for a "Microbiome-Guided Behaviour" Approach?

The microbiome is proving to be increasingly important for human brain functioning. A series of recent studies have shown that the microbiome influences the central nervous system in various ways, and consequently acts on the psychological well-being of the individual by mediating, among others, the reactions of stress and anxiety. From a specifically neuroethical point of view, according to some scholars, the particular composition of the microbiome-qua microbial community-can have consequences on the traditional idea of human individuality. Another neuroethical aspect concerns the reception of this new knowledge in relation to clinical applications. In fact, attention to the balance of the microbiome-which includes eating behavior, the use of psychobiotics and, in the treatment of certain diseases, the use of fecal microbiota transplantation-may be limited or even prevented by a biased negative attitude. This attitude derives from a prejudice related to everything that has to do with the organic processing of food and, in general, with the human stomach and intestine: the latter have traditionally been regarded as low, dirty, contaminated and opposed to what belongs to the mind and the brain. This biased attitude can lead one to fail to adequately consider the new anthropological conceptions related to the microbiome, resulting in a state of health, both physical and psychological, inferior to what one might have by paying the right attention to the knowledge available today. Shifting from the ubiquitous high-low metaphor (which is synonymous with superior-inferior) to an inside-outside metaphor can thus be a neuroethical strategy to achieve a new and unbiased reception of the discoveries related to the microbiome.

Atoning Past Indulgences: Oral Consumption and Moral Compensation

Previous research has shown that moral failures increase compensatory behaviors, such as prosociality and even self-punishment, because they are strategies to re-establish one's positive moral self-image. Do similar compensatory behaviors result from violations in normative eating practices? Three experiments explored the moral consequences of recalling instances of perceived excessive food consumption. In Experiment 1 we showed that women recalling an overeating (vs. neutral) experience reported more guilt and a desire to engage in prosocial behavior in the form of so-called self-sacrificing. In Experimental 2 this logic was applied to actual spontaneous helping behaviors toward an experimenter, with participants who recalled an overeating (vs. neutral) experience exhibiting more such helping in the laboratory. Experimental 3 expanded the investigation to self-inflicted pain: overeating (vs. neutral) recall led to higher levels of self-punishment as indicted by longer time periods spent engaging in the cold pressor task. In sum, failures in normative food consumption can be viewed as moral transgressions that elicits both interpersonal and intrapersonal compensatory behaviors aimed at restoring a positive moral self-image.

Do framing effects debunk moral beliefs?

May argues that framing effects do not undermine moral beliefs, because they affect only a minority of moral judgments in small ways. We criticize his estimates of the extent of framing effects on moral judgments, and then we argue that framing effects would cause trouble for moral judgments even if his estimates were correct.

Cognitive-Emotional and Inhibitory Deficits as a Window to Moral Decision-Making Difficulties Related to Exposure to Violence

In the present review, we illustrate how exposure to violence results in an increased probability of developing functional impairments of decision mechanisms necessary for moral behavior. We focus in particular on the detrimental effects of exposure to violence on emotional (e.g., Empathy), cognitive (e.g., Theory of Mind), and inhibitory control abilities. Relying on studies that document impaired moral behavior in individuals with deficits in these abilities, we propose a "model" of how exposure to violence can affect moral behavior. We then discuss how impaired moral decision making can also be a factor increasing the likelihood of reiterating violence: agents who lack abilities such as understanding and resonating with others' emotions or inhibitory control, can lead to an increase of violent displays. Thus, if not properly addressed, the noxious effects of exposure to violence on morality can lead to a violence generating cycle. We conclude proposing that interventions targeted at improving moral behavior can maximize their efficacy focusing on mitigating the impact of violence on the basic cognitive, emotional, and inhibitory abilities discussed.