Is moral disgust socially learned?

Abstract

The present study examined mother-child talk about disgust. A total of 68 mothers and their 4-, (M age = 55.72 months, SD = 4.13), 6-(M age = 77.70 months, SD = 5.45), and 8-(M age = 100.90 months, SD = 4.61) year-old children discussed four tasks relating to moral and pathogen disgust. Tasks comprised labeling facial expressions of emotions, generating items that would make participants disgusted or angry, identifying moral and pathogen transgressions as either causing anger or disgust, and finally rating the degree to which moral and pathogen transgressions were disgusting and justifying their responses. Mother-child dyads recognized the facial expression of happiness more accurately than that of disgust, but disgust was recognized equally well as expressions of sadness and anger across all age groups. Dyads associated moral transgressions with anger, whereas they associated pathogen transgressions with disgust. Finally, mothers and children and mothers individually rated pathogen transgressions as more disgusting than moral transgressions. Taken together, findings show that moral disgust is understood at a later age and is only used metaphorically, if at all, in children as old as 8 years old.

The Effect of Social Norms on Residential Insecticide Use

“…Religious individuals tend to view harmless violations of sacred norms as moral transgressions of the binding foundations of their society [67] or as violations of spiritual purity, which often elicit feelings of disgust among religious people [68][69][70][71]. This type of disgust as a response to moral transgressions is socially learned and passed from parent to child [72,73]. Moreover, feelings of disgust are sometimes intentionally nurtured and provoked in modern Judaism as a strategy to steer clear of sin [74].…”

Moral disciplining: The cognitive and evolutionary foundations of puritanical morality

“…Similarly, although there is some research exploring the emergence of a disgust-based morality in young children (finding, for the most part, that it tends to emerge relatively late, e.g., Aznar, Tenenbaum, & Russell, 2023;Rottman & Kelemen, 2012), the developmental emergence of a puritanical morality is more of an open question. When do young children come to believe that it's wrong to overindulge in Halloween candy or sleep until noon on a weekend?…”

Little puritans?

“…Similarly, although there is some research exploring the emergence of a disgust-based morality in young children (finding, for the most part, that it tends to emerge relatively late, e.g., Aznar, Tenenbaum, & Russell, 2023; Rottman & Kelemen, 2012), the developmental emergence of a puritanical morality is more of an open question. When do young children come to believe that it's wrong to overindulge in Halloween candy or sleep until noon on a weekend?…”