Anger, disgust, and presumption of harm as reactions to taboo-breaking behaviors.

Gutierrez, Roberto G.; Giner‐Sorolla, Roger

doi:10.1037/1528-3542.7.4.853

Cited by 166 publications

(199 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…However, scholars have found a number of reasons for bodily-moral disgust, many of which would be plausible to a lay person. For example, in various contexts, disgust has been shown to arise out of concern with contamination and impurity (Curtis & Biran, 2001;Rozin et al, 1999); perception of a threat to values Social Justifications 17 (Cottrell & Neuberg, 2005;Olatunji, 2008); violation of a social taboo (Gutierrez & Giner-Sorolla, 2007); or abnormal uses of the body (Giner-Sorolla, Bosson, Caswell, & Hettinger, 2009). Any of these explanations for bodily disgust, if given by our participants in the first two studies, would have been scored as elaborated reasons.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This technique has worked to reduce correlations between ratings of anger and disgust in similar moral contexts (Gutierrez & Giner-Sorolla, 2007). The third experiment presented similar emotion cues; however, we manipulated whether or not emotion explanations were provided when individuals were justifying their emotions, to see whether or not participants continued to prefer less elaborated reasons for disgust when elaborated reasons appropriate to disgust were made available to them.…”

Section: Overview Of Present Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Social justifications for moral emotions: When reasons for disgust are less elaborated than for anger.

Russell

Giner‐Sorolla

2011

Emotion

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In the present research, we tested the unreasoning disgust hypothesis: moral disgust, in particular in response to a violation of a bodily norm, is less likely than moral anger to be justified with cognitively elaborated reasons. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to explain why they felt anger and disgust toward pedophiles. Participants were more likely to invoke elaborated reasons, versus merely evaluative responses, when explaining their anger, versus disgust. Experiment 2 used a between-participants design; participants explained why they felt either anger or disgust toward seven groups that either violated a sexual or nonsexual norm. Again, elaborated reasons were less prevalent when explaining their disgust versus anger and, in particular, when explaining disgust toward a group that violated a sexual norm. Experiment 3 further established that these findings are due to a lower accessibility of elaborated reasons for bodily disgust, rather than inhibition in using them when provided. From these findings, it can be concluded that communicating external reasons for moral disgust at bodily violations is made more difficult due to the unavailability of those reasons to people

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Overview Of Present Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social justifications for moral emotions: When reasons for disgust are less elaborated than for anger.

Russell

Giner‐Sorolla

2011

Emotion

Self Cite

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“…Gutierrez and Giner-Sorolla (2007) found that disgust at a scientific experiment responded to a manipulation of whether or not it technically violated a taboo against eating human flesh, while anger responded primarily to manipulations of whether or not the experiment violated the rights of others, although it showed a lesser increase to the fact of taboo violation when harm was not described. In particular, these differences were most apparent when controlling for variance shared by reports of anger and disgust.…”

Section: Intentionality 3 Moral Anger But Not Moral Disgust Respondmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Russell¹,

Giner‐Sorolla²

2011

Emotion

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168

153

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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.

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“…It is unlikely such emotional responses could be socialised cross-culturally. Some research suggests that disgust and anger may however generalise to multiple moral foundations [36,37]. Moreover, these emotions might be better construed as pertaining to immorality rather than morality.…”

Section: Existing Theories Of Descriptive Moralitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Valuation of Morality and Mind: Morality as a Metacognitive Byproduct

Baxter¹

2017

Preprint

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The organism has evolved to view itself as a sentient being. It is theorised that morality is a byproduct of the high valuation of mental properties (the nature of its theory of mind). Five studies were conducted with 2675 participants. A positive association was confirmed between valuation of explicit morality, neutral (general) mind as measured by sentience, and significance of (specific) mind as measured by integrity (1). The moral worth ratings of a protagonist were affected by manipulating perceived significance of mind as expressed by scope and intensity of thought (2). 50% of participants thought morality applies exclusively to creatures with minds (3). A positive association was found between the self-awareness and moral worth ratings of a variety of creatures and human characters (4). Furthermore, the moral worth ratings of a human being and 'philosophical phantom' (sentient inanimate object) were greater than those of a philosophical zombie and rock (5). Like H. Gray et al. [1], this research suggests that morality is based on the belief in mind (1-5). Specifically, the results suggest that valuation of experience (sentience) and agency (significance of mind) are not independent, as assignment of morality appears preconditioned upon the perception of (or assumption of) sentience (5). Furthermore, contrary to dyadic models [2], preliminary analysis supported the prediction of self and other-directed morality (1).

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Anger, disgust, and presumption of harm as reactions to taboo-breaking behaviors.

Cited by 166 publications

References 42 publications

Social justifications for moral emotions: When reasons for disgust are less elaborated than for anger.

Social justifications for moral emotions: When reasons for disgust are less elaborated than for anger.

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

Valuation of Morality and Mind: Morality as a Metacognitive Byproduct

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