Harm mediates the disgust-immorality link.

Abstract

Many acts are disgusting, but only some of these acts are immoral. Dyadic morality predicts that disgusting acts should be judged as immoral to the extent that they seem harmful. Consistent with this prediction, 3 studies reveal that perceived harm mediates the link between feelings of disgust and moral condemnation-even for ostensibly harmless "purity" violations. In many cases, accounting for perceived harm completely eliminates the link between disgust and moral condemnation. Analyses also reveal the predictive power of anger and typicality/weirdness in moral judgments of disgusting acts. The mediation of disgust by harm holds across diverse acts including gay marriage, sex acts, and religious blasphemy. Revealing the endogenous presence and moral relevance of harm within disgusting-but-ostensibly harmless acts argues against modular accounts of moral cognition such as moral foundations theory. Instead, these data support pluralistic conceptions of harm and constructionist accounts of morality and emotion. Implications for moral cognition and the concept of "purity" are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Rationalization and Reflection Differentially Modulate Prior Attitudes Toward the Purity Domain

“…Past research has shown that moral disapproval of taboo behavior correlates with the belief in its harmful outcomes (Schein et al, )—a result which we replicate in Study 1. Then, in Studies 2 and 3, we randomly assign participants to engage in either reflection or rationalization —two cognitive processes that could give rise to the aforementioned correlation—and record their effects (see Table ).…”

“…However, when statistically controlling for harmfulness beliefs, belief in harmful outcomes—and not disgust—better predicts moral condemnation (Gray & Schein, ). Furthermore, mediation analyses suggest that beliefs in harmfulness mediate the relationship between disgust sensitivity and moralization (Schein, Ritter & Gray, ). Thus, intergroup moral disagreement may arise from contradictory beliefs about whether impure acts are harmful, and it is these beliefs that proximately drive moral condemnation.…”

The Visual Guide to Morality: Vision as an Integrative Analogy for Moral Experience, Variability and Mechanism

“…It can be difficult for Westerners to appreciate these judgments (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, ), but similar moral gaps occur even within America, as liberals and conservatives disagree about the importance of chastity (Haidt, ) and social order (Janoff‐Bulman & Carnes, ). Consider the case of gay marriage: whereas liberals see as an expression of love, some conservatives see moral turpitude and irreparable harm to society (Crawford, Inbar, & Maloney, ; Schein, Ritter, & Gray, forthcoming).…”

“…Moral perceptions also change based on temporary mood. Incidental inductions of disgust from dirty desks or fart spray have been associated with harsher moral judgments (Schnall, Haidt, Clore, & Jordan, ; Van Dillen, van der Wal, & van den Bos, ; but see Landy & Goodwin, ), likely because of the negative affect (Valdesolo & DeSteno, ) and perceived harm (Gray & Schein, forthcoming; Schein et al, forthcoming) inherent in disgust. Whereas moral psychologists once asked if emotions play a role in moral cognitions, they now ask how emotions play a role.…”

“…Ostensible cognitive differences between harm and purity scenarios stem not from moral content – i.e., harm versus purity (Clifford, Iyengar, Cabeza, & Sinnott‐Armstrong, ; Young & Saxe, ) – but instead of confounds: purity scenarios such as bestiality are weirder and less severe than murder scenarios such as murder (Gray & Keeney, , ). Specific links between moral content and emotions – i.e., disgust and purity – are also not distinct (Cameron et al, ), but are instead rooted in perceived harm, consistent with dyadic morality (Gray & Schein, forthcoming; Schein et al, forthcoming). The argument for modular morality also fails to capture another important feature of our moral world – moral coherence.…”