Moral anger, but not moral disgust, responds to intentionality.

Abstract

We propose that, when people judge moral situations, anger responds to the contextual cues of harm and intentionality. On the other hand, disgust responds uniquely to whether or not a bodily norm violation has occurred; its apparent response to harm and intent is entirely explained by the coactivation of anger. We manipulated intent, harm, and bodily norm violation (eating human flesh) within a vignette describing a scientific experiment. Participants then rated their anger, disgust, and moral judgment, as well as various appraisals. Anger responded independently of disgust to harm and intentionality, whereas disgust responded independently of anger only to whether or not the act violated the bodily norm of cannibalism. Theoretically relevant appraisals accounted for the effects of harm and intent on anger; however, appraisals of abnormality did not fully account for the effects of the manipulations on disgust. Our results show that anger and disgust are separately elicited by different cues in a moral situation.

Moral emotions and the envisaging of mitigating circumstances for wrongdoing

“…In the social domain, however, disgust may also respond categorically to a particular class of violations-those pertaining to bodily-purity norms, or the rules governing the proper uses of the body within a given culture (see Haidt, Rozin, McCauley, & Imada, 1997;Horberg, Oveis, Keltner, & Cohen, 2009;Rozin et al, 1999;Russell & Giner-Sorolla, 2011a, in press). Consistent with this thesis, Russell and Giner-Sorolla (2011a) found that, in direct contrast to anger, levels of reported disgust were unaffected by whether or not an act of wrongdoing was performed intentionally, and affected only by whether the act violated a bodily norm.…”

“…For example, anger provoked in one situation has been shown to "spill over" into orthogonal decisions about blame and punishment, but dissipate when relevant cues of justice are highlighted (see Goldberg et al, 1999). At least three antecedent features of a harmful event seem to impact upon the intensity of anger: severity (Rule & Duker, 1973;Schwartz, Kane, Joseph, Running head: MORAL EMOTIONS AND MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES 5 & Tedeschi, 1978), intentionality (Russell & Giner-Sorolla, 2011a), and justifiability (Hewitt, 1975;Quigley & Tedeschi, 1996). Additionally, whether or not the act of harm was perceived to be avoidable or controllable may be a fourth antecedent, though findings for this dimension are less consistent (cf.…”

On Disgust and Moral Judgments: A Review

“…To conclude, although there is sufficient evidence to believe that disgust and anger are connected in their response to moral judgments that include pure transgressions; they, in fact, act distinctively (Chapman & Anderson, 2013). One potential explanation could be that disgust is considered an avoidance-motivated and distancing emotion; whereas anger is considered more of an approach-motivated and reactive emotion (Mackie, Devos, & Smith, 2000;Russell & Giner-Sorolla, 2011a;Ugazio et al, 2012). However, this assumption needs to be tested empirically in order to be confirmed.…”

“…Once again I am also concerned with how much of this claim is connected to moral evaluations of pure transgressions or those reminding us of physical disgust. For instance, there is evidence suggesting that anger and not disgust responds more powerfully to manipulations of the intentionality of a wrong action and whether it causes harm to others (Giner-Sorolla, Bosson, Caswell, & Hettinger, 2012;Gutierrez & Giner-Sorolla, 2007;Russell & Giner-Sorolla, 2011a).…”

“…However, one important caveat in some studies (GinerSorolla et al, 2012;2007;Russell & Giner-Sorolla, 2011a, 2011b) is that they made use of standardized data. As mentioned before, one of the peripheral aims of this review is concerned with whether moral judgments influenced by physical disgust are restricted only to transgressions that remind us of physically disgusting stimuli or also extended to pure transgressions.…”