The role of emotion in moral judgment is currently a topic of much debate in moral psychology. One specific claim made by many researchers is that irrelevant feelings of disgust can amplify the severity of moral condemnation. Numerous studies have found this effect, but there have also been several published failures to replicate this effect. Clarifying this issue would inform important theoretical debates between rival accounts of moral judgment. We meta-analyzed all available studies, published and unpublished, that experimentally manipulated incidental disgust prior to or concurrent with a moral judgment task (k = 50). We found that there is evidence for a small amplification effect of disgust (d = .11), which is strongest for gustatory/olfactory modes of disgust induction. However, there is also some suggestion of publication bias in this literature, and when this is accounted for, the effect disappears entirely (d =-.01). Moreover, prevalent confounds mean that the effect size that we estimate is best interpreted as an upper bound on the size of the amplification effect. The results of this meta-analysis argue against strong claims about the causal role of affect in moral judgment and suggest a need for new, more rigorous research on this topic. Abstract The role of emotion in moral judgment is currently a topic of much debate in moral psychology.

No abstract

The role of emotion in moral judgment is currently a topic of much debate in moral psychology. One specific claim made by many researchers is that irrelevant feelings of disgust can amplify the severity of moral condemnation. Numerous studies have found this effect, but there have also been several published failures to replicate this effect. Clarifying this issue would inform important theoretical debates between rival accounts of moral judgment. We meta-analyzed all available studies, published and unpublished, that experimentally manipulated incidental disgust prior to or concurrent with a moral judgment task (k = 50). We found that there is evidence for a small amplification effect of disgust (d = .11), which is strongest for gustatory/olfactory modes of disgust induction. However, there is also some suggestion of publication bias in this literature, and when this is accounted for, the effect disappears entirely (d = -.01). Moreover, prevalent confounds mean that the effect size that we estimate is best interpreted as an upper bound on the size of the amplification effect. The results of this meta-analysis argue against strong claims about the causal role of affect in moral judgment and suggest a need for new, more rigorous research on this topic. AbstractThe role of emotion in moral judgment is currently a topic of much debate in moral psychology.

Author contributions: The 1 st through 4 th and last authors developed the research questions, oversaw the project, and contributed equally. The 1 st through 3 rd authors oversaw the Main Studies and Replication Studies, and the 4 th , 6 th , 7 th , and 8 th authors oversaw the Forecasting Study. The 1 st , 4 th , 5 th , 8 th , and 9 th authors conducted the primary analyses. The 10 th through 15 th authors conducted the Bayesian analyses. The first and 16 th authors conducted the multivariate meta-analysis.

The CAD triad hypothesis (Rozin, Lowery, Imada, & Haidt, 1999) stipulates that, cross-culturally, people feel anger for violations of autonomy, contempt for violations of community, and disgust for violations of divinity. Although the disgust-divinity link has received some measure of empirical support, the results have been difficult to interpret in light of several conceptual and design flaws. Taking a revised methodological approach, including use of newly validated (Study 1), pathogen-free violations of the divinity code, we found (Study 2) little evidence of disgust-related phenomenology (nausea, gagging, loss of appetite) or action tendency (desire to move away), but much evidence of anger-linked desire to retaliate, as a major component of individuals' projected response to "pure" (pathogen-free) violations of the divinity code. Study 3 replicated these results using faces in lieu of words as a dependent measure. Concordant findings emerged from an archival study (Study 4) examining the aftermath of a real-life sacred violation-the burning of Korans by U.S. military personnel. Study 5 further corroborated these results using continuous measures based on everyday emotion terms and new variants of the divinity-pure scenarios featuring sacrilegious acts committed by a theologically irreverent member of one's own group rather than an ideologically opposed member of another group. Finally, a supplemental study found the anger-dominant attribution pattern to remain intact when the impious act being judged was the judge's own. Based on these and related results, we posit anger to be the principal emotional response to moral transgressions irrespective of the normative content involved.