Disgust as embodied moral judgment

Surviving at any cost: guilt expression following extreme ethical conflicts in a virtual setting

Studying human behavior in response to large-scale catastrophic events, particularly how moral challenges would be undertaken under extreme conditions, is an important preoccupation for contemporary scientists and decision leaders. However, researching this issue was hindered by the lack of readily available models. Immersive virtual worlds could represent a solution, by providing ways to test human behavior in controlled life-threatening situations. Using a massively multi-player zombie apocalypse setting, we analysed spontaneously reported feelings of guilt following ethically questionable actions related to survival. The occurrence and magnitude of guilt depended on the nature of the consequences of the action. Furthermore, feelings of guilt predicted long-lasting changes in behavior, displayed as compensatory actions. Finally, actions inflicting immediate harm to others appeared mostly prompted by panic and were more commonly regretted. Thus, extreme conditions trigger a reduction of the impact of ethical norms in decision making, although awareness of ethicality is retained to a surprising extent.

The Self-Regulation Effect of Fertility Status on Inbreeding Aversion: When Fertile, Disgust Increases more in Response to Descriptions of One's Own than of Others' Inbreeding

The ovulatory shift modulates emotions related to female sexuality. Because fertility status only affects the individual's own opportunity cost, the adaptive value of this shift is expected to stem from self-regulation. To test this assumption we asked women to contemplate various inbreeding descriptions: 1) they themselves having sex with male relatives; 2) their sister having sex with their common male relatives; and 3) an unrelated woman having sex with her male relatives (in 1, but not 2 and 3, negative fitness consequences are affected by the participant's fertility). We dichotomized the dependent variable disgust (ceiling vs. non-ceiling) and analyzed the interaction between fertility status and description type. The ovulatory shift was stronger in descriptions where they themselves were described as engaging in inbreeding. A smaller increase was also found in reactions to others engaging in inbreeding. We explain the latter effect as due to self-reflection.

Moral Violations Reduce Oral Consumption

Consumers frequently encounter moral violations in everyday life. They watch movies and television shows about crime and deception, hear news reports of corporate fraud and tax evasion, and hear gossip about cheaters and thieves. How does exposure to moral violations influence consumption? Because moral violations arouse disgust and because disgust is an evolutionarily important signal of contamination that should provoke a multi-modal response, we hypothesize that moral violations affect a key behavioral response to disgust: reduced oral consumption. In three experiments, compared with those in control conditions, people drank less water and chocolate milk while (a) watching a film portraying the moral violations of incest, (b) writing about moral violations of cheating or theft, and (c) listening to a report about fraud and manipulation. These findings imply that "moral disgust" influences consumption in ways similar to core disgust, and thus provide evidence for the associations between moral violations, emotions, and consumer behavior.

Does a brief state mindfulness induction moderate disgust-driven social avoidance and decision-making? An experimental investigation

In this experimental study, we evaluated whether manipulated disgust and mindfulness predicted social avoidance in bowel health contexts. Community participants (n = 101) were randomised to conditions in which disgust and/or state mindfulness were experimentally induced. Tasks assessing social avoidance and perceptions of available social networks in the context of bowel/health problems were conducted. Manipulation checks confirmed the elicitation of disgust and state mindfulness in the applicable conditions. As expected, persons in the disgust condition were more likely to exhibit immediate social avoidance (rejecting a glass of water). State disgust predicted greater socially avoidant decision-making, less decisional conflict, and smaller social network maps. State mindfulness predicted fewer names on inner network circles and amplified the effect of disgust on creating smaller social network maps. This report furthers understanding of disgust and avoidance in bowel health contexts, and suggests the need for caution in mindfulness interventions that raise awareness of emotion without also providing skills in emotional regulation.

Comment: Strohminger–McGinn: Deconstructing the Moral Amplification Effect

I use a number of McGinn’s (2011) ideas to identify likely confounds in the induction of incidental disgust as the basis of the moral amplification effect.

The self-regulation effect of fertility status on inbreeding aversion: when fertile, disgust increases more in response to descriptions of one's own than of others' inbreeding

The ovulatory shift modulates emotions related to female sexuality. Because fertility status only affects the individual's own opportunity cost, the adaptive value of this shift is expected to stem from self-regulation. To test this assumption we asked women to contemplate various inbreeding descriptions: 1) they themselves having sex with male relatives; 2) their sister having sex with their common male relatives; and 3) an unrelated woman having sex with her male relatives (in 1, but not 2 and 3, negative fitness consequences are affected by the participant's fertility). We dichotomized the dependent variable disgust (ceiling vs. non-ceiling) and analyzed the interaction between fertility status and description type. The ovulatory shift was stronger in descriptions where they themselves were described as engaging in inbreeding. A smaller increase was also found in reactions to others engaging in inbreeding. We explain the latter effect as due to self-reflection.

When body and mind are talking. Interoception moderates embodied cognition

Recent research on so-called embodied cognitions strengthens the current view that the body and the mind cannot be separated in producing cognitions. But how and when does the body talk to the mind? Drawing on the notion that bodily processes are transformed into mental action through experiences, it is argued that embodied cognitions should be moderated by interindividual differences in the sensitivity to stimuli originating inside of the body, that is, by interoception. In line with these assumptions, two experiments demonstrate that the embodiment of weight and softness in value judgments and person impressions is moderated by interoception as assessed by a body-awareness questionnaire (Experiment 1) and a heartbeat perception task (Experiment 2). Taken together, these findings strongly speak to the notion that bodily processes and the experience thereof play an important role in embodiment, thereby extending previous research above and beyond the mere demonstration of body-mind interactions.

Does Cleanliness Influence Moral Judgments?

Schnall, Benton, and Harvey (2008) hypothesized that physical cleanliness reduces the severity of moral judgments. In support of this idea, they found that individuals make less severe judgments when they are primed with the concept of cleanliness (Exp. 1) and when they wash their hands after experiencing disgust (Exp. 2). We conducted direct replications of both studies using materials supplied by the original authors. We did not find evidence that physical cleanliness reduced the severity of moral judgments using samples sizes that provided over .99 power to detect the original effect sizes. Our estimates of the overall effect size were much smaller than estimates from Experiment 1 (original d = −0.60, 95% CI [−1.23, 0.04], N = 40; replication d = −0.01, 95% CI [−0.28, 0.26], N = 208) and Experiment 2 (original d = −0.85, 95% CI [−1.47, −0.22], N = 43; replication d = 0.01, 95% CI [−.34, 0.36], N = 126). These findings suggest that the population effect sizes are probably substantially smaller than the original estimates. Researchers investigating the connections between cleanliness and morality should therefore use large sample sizes to have the necessary power to detect subtle effects.

Are good reasoners more incest-friendly? Trait cognitive reflection predicts selective moralization in a sample of American adults

Two studies examined the relationship between individual differences in cognitive reflection (CRT) and the tendency to accord genuinely moral (non-conventional) status to a range of counter-normative acts — that is, to treat such acts as wrong regardless of existing social opinion or norms. We contrasted social violations that are intrinsically harmful to others (e.g., fraud, thievery) with those that are not (e.g., wearing pajamas to work and engaging in consensual acts of sexual intimacy with an adult sibling). Our key hypothesis was that more reflective (higher CRT) individuals would tend to moralize selectively — treating only intrinsically harmful acts as genuinely morally wrong — whereas less reflective (lower CRT) individuals would moralize more indiscriminately. We found clear support for this hypothesis in a large and ideologically diverse sample of American adults. The predicted associations were not fully accounted for by the subjects’ political orientation, sensitivity to gut feelings, gender, age, educational attainment, or their placement on a sexual morals-specific measure of social conservatism. Our studies are the first to demonstrate that, in addition to modulating the intensity of moral condemnation, reflection may also play a key role in setting the boundaries of the moral domain as such.

Self-Interest Bias in Moral Judgments of Others' Actions

The automatic and affective nature of moral judgments leads to the expectation that these judgments are biased by an observer's own interests. Although the idea of self-interest bias is old, it has never been directly tested with respect to the moral judgments of other individuals' behaviors. The participants of three experiments observed other individuals' counternormative behavior (breaking a rule or cheating for gain), which was judged as immoral. However, this judgment became much more lenient when the observers gained from the observed behavior. All three studies showed that the influence of self-interest on moral judgments was completely mediated by the observer's increased liking for the perpetrator of the immoral acts but not by changes in mood. When the participants were induced to dislike the perpetrator (in a moderation-of-process design), the self-interest bias disappeared. Implications for the intuitionist approach to moral judgment are discussed.

Detrimental Effects of Corruption and Subjective Well-Being

Both corruption and subjective well-being (SWB) are of concern to academics, governments, and policy makers. Although intuition suggests that corruption deteriorates SWB, some evidence suggests that corruption can enhance the economy, which may in turn improve SWB. We seek to explore whether, how, and when corruption is related to SWB using representative data from 150 nations. Surprisingly, we find that perceptions of national corruption are high across many nations. Mediation analyses and longitudinal modeling show some support that national corruption lowers national income and institutional trust, which in turn lowers SWB, particularly for life satisfaction. Moderators were found such that national corruption and individual perceptions of corruption enhance the effect of income for SWB; further, the detrimental effect of national corruption was more pronounced in Western as compared to non-Western nations. Overall, the results provide robust evidence that both individual and societal perceptions of corruption are detrimental to SWB.

Blasphemy or art: what art should be censored and who wants to censor it?

Current events have marked the increasing tension between freedom of artistic expression and religious tolerance and sensitivity. While there have been several controversies in the West concerning art critical of Christianity, a more complex dynamic has arisen as some Western artists have created art critical of Islam. Research was undertaken to examine what aspects of artwork lead to the most aversive reactions and desire to ban art and individual differences in response to controversial art. Of particular interest was the response to artwork critical of Christianity in comparison to artwork critical of Islam. Studies 1 and 2 suggest that the artwork that mixes the sacred and profane (whether critical of Christianity or Islam) is particularly likely to elicit a negative emotional response and is more likely to be the target for censorship. Also consistent across Studies 1 and 2 individuals who based their moral foundation on purity and have Christian religious beliefs were more likely to endorse banning said artwork. In Study 3 an even more complex picture emerged in which non-Christians were more likely to endorse banning art critical of Islam in comparison to art critical of Christianity.

From the heart: hand over heart as an embodiment of honesty

Motor movements increase the accessibility of the thought content and processes with which they typically co-occur. In two studies, we demonstrate that putting a hand on one’s heart is associated with honesty, both perceived in others and shown in one’s own behavior. Target persons photographed when performing this gesture appeared more trustworthy than the same targets photographed with both hands down (Study 1). Participants who put their hand on their hearts were more willing to admit their lack of knowledge (Study 2), compared to when they performed a neutral gesture. These findings replicate and extend the notion that bodily experience related to abstract concepts of honesty can influence both perceptions of others, and one’s own actions.

Moral judgment modulation by disgust is bi-directionally moderated by individual sensitivity

Modern theories of moral judgment predict that both conscious reasoning and unconscious emotional influences affect the way people decide about right and wrong. In a series of experiments, we tested the effect of subliminal and conscious priming of disgust facial expressions on moral dilemmas. "Trolley-car"-type scenarios were used, with subjects rating how acceptable they found the utilitarian course of action to be. On average, subliminal priming of disgust facial expressions resulted in higher rates of utilitarian judgments compared to neutral facial expressions. Further, in replication, we found that individual change in moral acceptability ratings due to disgust priming was modulated by individual sensitivity to disgust, revealing a bi-directional function. Our second replication extended this result to show that the function held for both subliminally and consciously presented stimuli. Combined across these experiments, we show a reliable bi-directional function, with presentation of disgust expression primes to individuals with higher disgust sensitivity resulting in more utilitarian judgments (i.e., number-based) and presentations to individuals with lower sensitivity resulting in more deontological judgments (i.e., rules-based). Our results may reconcile previous conflicting reports of disgust modulation of moral judgment by modeling how individual sensitivity to disgust determines the direction and degree of this effect.

Moral rigidity in obsessive-compulsive disorder: do abnormalities in inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility and disgust play a role?

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Abnormalities in cognitive control and disgust responding are well-documented in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and also interfere with flexible, outcome-driven utilitarian moral reasoning. The current study examined whether individuals with OCD differ from healthy and anxious individuals in their use of utilitarian moral reasoning, and whether abnormalities in inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility and disgust contribute to moral rigidity.

METHODS

Individuals with OCD (n = 23), non-OCD anxiety (n = 21) and healthy participants (n = 24) gave forced-choice responses to three types of moral dilemmas: benign, impersonal, personal. Scores on measures of cognitive flexibility, inhibitory control and trait disgust were also examined.

RESULTS

Individuals with OCD gave fewer utilitarian responses to impersonal moral dilemmas compared to healthy, but not anxious, individuals. Poorer cognitive flexibility was associated with fewer utilitarian responses to impersonal dilemmas in the OCD group. Furthermore, greater trait disgust was associated with increased utilitarian responding to personal dilemmas in the OCD group, but decreased utilitarian responding to impersonal dilemmas in the anxious group.

LIMITATIONS

Although we did not find an association between inhibitory control and moral reasoning, smaller associations may be evident in a larger sample.

CONCLUSION

These data indicate that individuals with OCD use more rigid moral reasoning in response to impersonal moral dilemmas compared to healthy individuals, and that this may be associated with reduced cognitive flexibility. Furthermore, these data suggest that trait disgust may exert opposing effects on moral reasoning in individuals with OCD compared to those with other forms of anxiety.

Corpses, Maggots, Poodles and Rats: Emotional Selection Operating in Three Phases of Cultural Transmission of Urban Legends

Abstract

In one conception of cultural evolution, the evolutionary success of cultural units that are transmitted from individual to individual is determined by forces of cultural selection. Here we argue that it is helpful to distinguish between several distinct phases of the transmission process in which cultural selection can operate, such as a choose-to-receive phase, an encode-and-retrieve phase, and a choose-to-transmit phase. Here we focus on emotional selection in cultural transmission of urban legends, which has previously been shown to operate in the choose-to-transmit phase. In a series of experiments we studied serial transmission of stories based on urban legends manipulated to be either high or low on disgusting content. Results supported emotional selection operating in all three phases of cultural transmission. Thus, the prevalence of disgusting urban legends in North America may be explained by emotional selection through a multitude of pathways.

Preliminary support for a generalized arousal model of political conservatism

It is widely held that negative emotions such as threat, anxiety, and disgust represent the core psychological factors that enhance conservative political beliefs. We put forward an alternative hypothesis: that conservatism is fundamentally motivated by arousal, and that, in this context, the effect of negative emotion is due to engaging intensely arousing states. Here we show that study participants agreed more with right but not left-wing political speeches after being exposed to positive as well as negative emotion-inducing film-clips. No such effect emerged for neutral-content videos. A follow-up study replicated and extended this effect. These results are consistent with the idea that emotional arousal, in general, and not negative valence, specifically, may underlie political conservatism.

Emotion regulation as the foundation of political attitudes: does reappraisal decrease support for conservative policies?

Cognitive scientists, behavior geneticists, and political scientists have identified several ways in which emotions influence political attitudes, and psychologists have shown that emotion regulation can have an important causal effect on physiology, cognition, and subjective experience. However, no work to date explores the possibility that emotion regulation may shape political ideology and attitudes toward policies. Here, we conduct four studies that investigate the role of a particular emotion regulation strategy – reappraisal in particular. Two observational studies show that individual differences in emotion regulation styles predict variation in political orientations and support for conservative policies. In the third study, we experimentally induce disgust as the target emotion to be regulated and show that use of reappraisal reduces the experience of disgust, thereby decreasing moral concerns associated with conservatism. In the final experimental study, we show that use of reappraisal successfully attenuates the relationship between trait-level disgust sensitivity and support for conservative policies. Our findings provide the first evidence of a critical link between emotion regulation and political attitudes.

Heart rate correlates of utilitarian moral decision-making in alcoholism

BACKGROUND

Recent studies of moral reasoning in patients with alcohol use disorders have indicated a 'utilitarian' bias, whereby patients are more likely to endorse emotionally aversive actions in favor of aggregate welfare (e.g., to kill a person in order to save a group of people). The aim of the present study was to examine psychophysiological correlates of this tendency indexed by heart rate.

METHODS

The sample was composed by 31 alcohol-dependent individuals and 34 healthy controls without alcohol use disorders. Electrocardiogram was recorded at rest and during execution of a validated moral judgment task, including non-moral scenarios, and moral dilemmas that were either high in emotional salience ("personal scenarios") or low in emotional salience ("impersonal scenarios").

RESULTS

Alcohol-dependent individuals showed a blunted response to moral dilemmas. Furthermore, healthy controls displayed decreased heart rate to the personal vs. impersonal or non-moral scenarios, while alcohol-dependent individuals failed to differentiate dilemmas in terms of heart rate both prior decision-making and its post appraisal. These deficits were not related to baseline differences in Heart Rate.

CONCLUSION

Our findings indicate that alcohol-dependent individuals failed to engage emotional aversive reactions to personal moral violations in terms of heart rate response.

Aiming for the stomach and hitting the heart: dissociable triggers and sources for disgust reactions

Disgust reactions can be elicited using stimuli that engender orogastric rejection (e.g., pus and vomit; core disgust stimuli) but also using images of bloody injuries or medical procedures (e.g., surgeries; blood [body] boundary violation [B-BV] disgust stimuli). These two types of disgust reaction are presumed to be connected by a common evolutionary function of avoiding either food- or blood-borne contaminants. However, reactions to bloody injuries are typically conflated with reactions to the potential pain being experienced by the victim. This may explain why the two forms of "disgust", although similarly communicated (through self-report and facial expressions), evince different patterns of physiological reactivity. Therefore, we tested whether the communicative similarities and physiological dissimilarities would hold when markers of potential contamination in the latter category are removed, leaving only painful injuries that lack blood or explicit body-envelope violations. Participants viewed films that depicted imagery associated with (a) core disgust, (b) painful injuries, or (c) neutral scenes while we measured facial, cardiovascular, and gastric reactivity. Whereas communicative measures (self-report and facial muscles) suggested that participants experienced increased disgust for core disgust and painful injuries, peripheral physiology dissociated the two: core disgust decreased normal gastric activity and painful-injury disgust decelerated heart rate and increased heart rate variability. These findings suggest that expressions of disgust toward bodily injuries may reflect a fundamentally different affective response than those evoked by core disgust and that this (cardiovascularly mediated) response may in fact be more closely tied to pain perceptions (or empathy) rather than contaminant-laden stimuli.

Hand over Heart Primes Moral Judgments and Behavior

Morality is a prominent guide of both action and perception. We argue that non-emotional gestures can prime the abstract concept of honesty. Four studies demonstrated that the emblematic gesture associated with honesty (putting a hand on one’s heart) increased the level of honesty perceived by others, and increased the honesty shown in one’s own behavior. Target persons performing this gesture were described in terms associated with honesty, and appeared more trustworthy to others than when the same targets were photographed with a control gesture. Persons performing the hand-over-heart gesture provided more honest assessments of others’ attractiveness, and refrained from cheating, as compared to persons performing neutral gestures. These findings suggest that bodily experience associated with abstract concepts can influence both one’s perceptions of others, and one’s own complex actions. Further, our findings suggest that this influence is not mediated by changes in affective states.

Valence of emotions and moral decision-making: increased pleasantness to pleasant images and decreased unpleasantness to unpleasant images are associated with utilitarian choices in healthy adults

Moral decision-making is a key asset for humans’ integration in social contexts, and the way we decide about moral issues seems to be strongly influenced by emotions. For example, individuals with deficits in emotional processing tend to deliver more utilitarian choices (accepting an emotionally aversive action in favor of communitarian well-being). However, little is known about the association between emotional experience and moral-related patterns of choice. We investigated whether subjective reactivity to emotional stimuli, in terms of valence, arousal, and dominance, is associated with moral decision-making in 95 healthy adults. They answered to a set of moral and non-moral dilemmas and assessed emotional experience in valence, arousal and dominance dimensions in response to neutral, pleasant, unpleasant non-moral, and unpleasant moral pictures. Results showed significant correlations between less unpleasantness to negative stimuli, more pleasantness to positive stimuli and higher proportion of utilitarian choices. We also found a positive association between higher arousal ratings to negative moral laden pictures and more utilitarian choices. Low dominance was associated with greater perceived difficulty over moral judgment. These behavioral results are in fitting with the proposed role of emotional experience in moral choice.

Harming ourselves and defiling others: what determines a moral domain?

Recent work has distinguished “harm” from “purity” violations, but how does an act get classified as belonging to a domain in the first place? We demonstrate the impact of not only the kind of action (e.g., harmful versus impure) but also its target (e.g., oneself versus another). Across two experiments, common signatures of harm and purity tracked with other-directed and self-directed actions, respectively. First, participants judged self-directed acts as primarily impure and other-directed acts as primarily harmful. Second, conservatism predicted harsher judgments of self-directed but not other-directed acts. Third, while participants delivered harsher judgments of intentional versus accidental acts, this effect was smaller for self-directed than other-directed acts. Finally, participants judged self-directed acts more harshly when focusing on the actor’s character versus the action itself; other-directed acts elicited the opposite pattern. These findings suggest that moral domains are defined not only by the kind of action but also by the target of the action.

Social distance decreases responders’ sensitivity to fairness in the ultimatum game

Studies using the Ultimatum Game have shown that participants reject unfair offers extended by another person although this incurs a financial cost. Previous research suggests that one possible explanation for this apparently self-defeating response is that unfair offers involve strong negative responses that decrease the chances of responders accepting offers that would objectively constitute a net profit. We tested the hypothesis that one way of reducing responders’ rejections of unfair offers is through increased psychological distance, so that participants move away from the concrete feeling of being unfairly treated. Social distance was manipulated by having participants play the Ultimatum Game either for themselves, or for another person. Compared to deciding for one’s self or a close social contact, participants showed less sensitivity to fairness when deciding for a stranger, as indicated by fewer rejected unfair offers. We suggest that social distance helps people move beyond immediate fairness concerns in the Ultimatum Game.

The interactive effect of anger and disgust on moral outrage and judgments

The two studies reported here demonstrated that a combination of anger and disgust predicts moral outrage. In Study 1, anger toward moral transgressions (sexual assault, funeral picketing) predicted moral outrage only when it co-occurred with at least moderate disgust, and disgust predicted moral outrage only when it co-occurred with at least moderate anger. In Study 2, a mock-jury paradigm that included emotionally disturbing photographs of a murder victim revealed that, compared to anger, disgust was a more consistent predictor of moral outrage (i.e., it predicted moral outrage at all levels of anger). Furthermore, moral outrage mediated the effect of participants' anger on their confidence in a guilty verdict--but only when anger co-occurred with at least a moderate level of disgust--whereas moral outrage mediated the effect of participants' disgust on their verdict confidence at all levels of anger. The interactive effect of anger and disgust has important implications for theoretical explanations of moral outrage, moral judgments in general, and legal decision making.

Core disgust and moral disgust are related to distinct spatiotemporal patterns of neural processing: an event-related potential study

Core disgust is thought to rely more on sensory and perceptual processes, whereas moral disgust is thought to rely more on social evaluation processes. However, little is known about the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying these two types of disgust. We recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) from participants while they performed a lexical decision task in which core- and moral-disgust words were intermixed with neutral words and pseudowords. Lexical judgment was faster for coredisgust words and slower for moral-disgust words, relative to the neutral words. Core-disgust words, relative to neutral words, elicited a larger early posterior negative (EPN), a larger N320, a smaller N400, and a larger late positive component (LPC), whereas moral disgust words elicited a smaller N320 and a larger N400 than neutral words. These results suggest that the N320 and N400 components are particularly sensitive to the neurocognitive processes that overlap in processing both core and moral disgust, whereas the EPN and LPC may reflect process that are particularly sensitive to core disgust.