Does Incidental Disgust Amplify Moral Judgment? A Meta-Analytic Review of Experimental Evidence

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 We meta-analyzed all available studies, published and unpublished, that experimentally manipulated incidental disgust prior to or concurrent with a moral judgment task (k = 50).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. Abstract The role of emotion in moral judgment is currently a topic of much debate in moral psychology.

Moral Violations and the Experience of Disgust and Anger

“…We also included ratings of purity, harm, and justice due to the suggestion that moral disgust is reserved for transgressions that are related to “purity violations” (e.g., misuse of the body, etc. ), while anger is related to violations of individual rights and community norms (Haidt and Graham, 2007; Landy and Goodwin, 2015). The vignette sets were moral disgust vignettes, moral anger vignettes, matched disgust vignettes that contained the same core disgust referents as the moral disgust vignettes, high disgust vignettes that were meant to induce greater disgust than the matched disgust vignettes, neutral control vignettes and scrambled vignettes (see Table 1).…”

How scientists fool themselves – and how they can stop

“…The participants are then asked to judge how to respond to moral transgressions; if those who have been exposed to clutter or smells favour harsher punishments, researchers declare their 'disgust hypothesis' to be supported 5 . But they have not considered competing explanations, he says, and so they ignore the possibility that participants are lashing out owing to anger at their foul treatment, not simply disgust.…”

Gruwelijke beelden van plaatsen delict: kijkstrategieën, opgewekte emoties en oordeelsvorming

“…Ander experimenteel onderzoek toont aan dat walgingsgevoeligheid positief gerelateerd is aan morele afkeuring van (kleine) overtredingen (Pizarro e.a., 2011;Van Dillen e.a., 2012). Verder heeft een recente meta-analyse aangetoond dat walging, opgeroepen door beeld, maar met name ook door smaak of geur, morele afkeuring kan versterken (Landy & Goodwin, 2015). Vooral de invloed van geur kan relevant zijn voor onderzoek onder bijvoorbeeld forensisch rechercheurs, die naast de beelden van de plaats delict, ook de bijkomende geuren te verwerken krijgen.…”