Do deviance perception and thinking style mediate the relationship between trait disgust and moral condemnation?
Annika Karinen & Hanah Chapman
Abstract
Past research suggests that individuals who are easily disgusted condemn harmful moral transgressions more than individuals who are less prone to disgust. In two experiments, we proposed and tested two variables that could explain this relationship: deviance perception and thinking style. In Experiment 1, we hypothesized that perceiving deviance in geometric shapes would mediate the relationship between trait disgust and moral condemnation. High trait disgust
may predispose an individual to greater perception of deviance, which may in turn make the individual judge moral transgressions as more deviant and wrong. In Experiment 2, we hypothesized that intuitive thinking would mediate the relationship between trait disgust and
moral condemnation. The intuitive characteristics of trait disgust may spill over to a more general tendency for intuitive thinking, and this can in turn affect moral condemnation. We found that higher trait disgust predicted harsher moral condemnation only in Experiment 2, and
neither of the mediation hypotheses were confirmed. However, there was suggestive evidence that trait disgust is related to a more intuitive thinking style, and that a more intuitive thinking style is related to moral condemnation. In exploratory analyses, trait disgust was related to the orderliness aspect of conscientiousness, and orderliness predicted harsher moral condemnation. However, no mediation was present. Additionally, trait disgust was associated with superstitious
beliefs. In sum, these experiments were not able to answer the question of why higher trait disgust predicts harsher moral condemnation, but they open up new avenues of research by suggesting that intuitive thinking, orderliness and superstition cluster around trait disgust.
Keywords: trait disgust, moral condemnation, wrongness judgment, deviance perception, thinking style, orderliness, superstition
Introduction
The contemporary view of disgust posits that its function is to help us avoid disease by serving as a behavioral extension of the immune system: avoiding “disgusting” objects prevents ingestion of pathogens and saves costly effort from the biological immune system (Curtis, De Barra & Aunger, 2011; Oaten, Stevenson & Case, 2009; Rozin & Fallon, 1987; Schaller & Park, 2011). Accordingly, disgust is elicited by potentially contaminating stimuli, such as body
products, spoiled food, wounds, insects and death (Haidt, McCauley & Rozin, 1994).
Interestingly, disgust is also elicited by moral transgressions (Haidt et al., 1994), and individuals who tend to be easily disgusted by physical stimuli such as feces or vomit are more condemning of moral transgressions (Chapman & Anderson, 2014; Jones & Fitness, 2008; Horberg, Oveis, Keltner & Cohen, 2009).
However, there is dispute about what kind of transgressions are influenced by trait differences in disgust. Although some argue that disgust is only associated with moral
transgressions that violate norms of bodily purity (e.g. “inappropriate” sex, food taboos; Haidt & Graham, 2007; Horberg, Oveis, Keltner & Cohen, 2009; Rozin, Lowery, Imada & Haidt, 1999) recent evidence suggests that disgust is also associated with non-purity transgressions that do not involve bodily purity norms (e.g. stealing, physical harm; Chapman & Anderson, 2014; Jones & Fitness, 2008). While purity transgressions involve stimuli that would be disgusting even outside the moral domain, it is surprising that the influence of trait disgust extends to condemnation of transgressions that do not involve physical disgust stimuli. For example, there is no evident reason why being disgusted by maggots or vomit would be related to condemning physical violence. However, it is possible that trait disgust influences other cognitive processes, which in turn influence moral condemnation – and thus mediate the relationship between trait disgust and
moral condemnation. In this study, our goal was to examine why trait differences in disgust would influence condemnation of moral non-purity transgressions. Specifically, we tested whether individual differences in deviance perception and cognitive thinking style would mediate this relationship. We concentrated on harm transgressions, since they are seen as maximally distinct from purity transgressions (Cameron, Lindquist & Gray, 2015).
Disgust protects us from contamination, and a major source of pathogens is other people: those who are sick and those who may carry novel pathogens (i.e. strangers). To identify and avoid such people, humans have developed a sensitivity to cues of potential contamination and deviance in people, such as lesions, disfigurements and other morphological abnormalities, as well as an appearance that deviates from one’s ingroup (Faulkner, Schaller, Park & Duncan, 2004; Kurzban & Leary, 2001). Human history is rife with examples of avoiding deviant individuals, such as lepers, immigrants or the mentally ill, and individual differences in trait disgust as well as priming disgust predict negative outgroup attitudes (e.g. Hodson & Costello, 2007; Inbar, Pizarro & Bloom, 2012). Deviant appearance also serves as a cue for contamination outside the social domain: for instance, discoloration, disfiguration or an abnormal texture can signal that a food may be spoiled.
Since deviant appearance in the physical world can indicate contamination, it is possible that people who are more sensitive to cues of contamination (i.e., higher in trait disgust) are also more sensitive to cues of deviance. That is, those higher in trait disgust may be more likely to make a cognitive judgment that a target has deviated from the norm. It is possible that this general tendency to perceive deviance in the physical world extends into the socio-moral domain: this could explain why trait disgust influences condemnation of moral transgressions even when no disgust elicitors are present. Previous research suggests that conservatives endorse
harsher punishments for criminals than liberals, in part because they are more likely to perceive deviance in non-social objects, which generalizes to the social realm (Okimoto & Gromet, in preparation). Similarly, greater deviance perception may explain the greater condemnation of moral transgressions associated with trait disgust: those who are higher in trait disgust may perceive the transgressions to be more deviant, and consequently, more wrong.
Following this line of reasoning, we investigated whether trait disgust is associated with perceiving non-standard objects as deviant, and whether this mediates the relationship between trait disgust and moral condemnation of harm transgressions (H1). To study whether trait disgust is associated specifically with the cognitive perception of deviance, rather than affect or
motivation toward the deviant target, we stripped off the potentially deviant target from any self-relevance or social meaning (see Okimoto & Gromet, in preparation, for a similar approach). Therefore, we used geometrical shapes with an abnormality to investigate participants’ deviance perception.
In addition to individual differences in perception of deviance, individual differences in another cognitive tendency, namely, thinking style, may be associated with trait disgust. While disgust is an instinctive protective reaction to avoid contamination, having a stronger tendency for such may be associated with a more general inclination to follow one’s “instinctive” reactions towards objects. In other words, trait disgust may be associated with a stronger preference for relying on quick and intuitive rather than slow and analytical cognitive processes (e.g. Epstein, 1994; Kahneman & Frederick, 2002). Research suggests that disgust is associated with (moral) intuition, and matters such as intent or consent do not change a disgust response in the way they change for instance an anger response (Haidt, 2001; Young & Saxe, 2011). Additionally, disgust is associated with certain “irrational” tendencies such as magical thinking, and resistant to
disconfirming information. For instance, people are reluctant to have a drink that has been touched with cockroach even though they know that the roach is sterilized, or wear a washed sweater that once belonged to a disliked person (Rozin, Millman & Nemeroff, 1986). Given that disgust is associated with moral intuitions and resistant to reasoning, higher trait disgust may be associated with a more intuitive thinking style.
A connection between trait disgust and thinking style could have consequences for moral judgment. Previous research has shown that people who engage in analytical thinking make reduced wrongness judgments of non-harmful but disgusting purity-violating acts even when controlling for demographics, political ideology, religiosity, and moral values (Pennycook, Cheynea, Barra, Koehler & Fugelsang, 2014). Additionally, people condemn incestuous behavior less when forced to reflect on a strong versus a weak argument in favor of it (Paxton, Ungar & Greene, 2012). However, neither of these studies tested whether thinking style influences judgment of non-purity transgressions. We therefore tested whether trait disgust is associated with intuitive thinking, and whether this mediates the relationship between trait disgust and moral condemnation of harm transgressions (H2).
The Current Studies
In two experiments we tested whether trait disgust predicts deviance perception and thinking style, and whether these variables mediate the relationship between trait disgust and moral condemnation of harm transgressions. In Experiment 1 we hypothesized that higher trait disgust is associated with the perceived deviance of geometric shapes, and that this perception of deviance mediates the relationship between trait disgust and moral condemnation (H1). In Experiment 2 we hypothesized that higher trait disgust is associated with intuitive thinking, when measured with both performance-based and self-report-based tests, and that intuitive
thinking mediates the relationship between trait disgust and moral condemnation. Since trait disgust correlates with social conservatism (see Terrizzi, Shook & McDaniel, 2013 for a meta-analysis) neuroticism (e.g. Haidt et al., 1994; Olatunji, Haidt, McKay, & David, 2008), and gender (Olatunji et al., 2008), we controlled for these variables in both experiments.
Additionally, we controlled for trait anger and religiosity. We did not control for openness to experience, as it does not substantially correlate with trait disgust (Tybur, Lieberman & Griskevicius, 2009).
Experiment 1 Method
Participants. Participants were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and
completed the study online in return for monetary compensation. Participants were over 18 years of age and restricted to respondents with U.S. IP addresses and a history of 95% acceptable performance on other MTurk studies.
Questionnaires. As a measure of trait disgust, participants completed the Disgust Scale–
Revised (DS-R; Olatunji et al., 2007), which is a 25-item revision of the DS (Haidt et al., 1994). The DS-R consists of three subscales: core disgust (rotting foods, body products and
rodents/insects), animal reminder disgust (blood, gore, death) and contamination disgust
(hygiene violations). Past research suggests that specifically core disgust is associated with moral condemnation of harm transgressions (Chapman & Anderson, 2014). We had no a priori
hypothesis for which subscales of the DS-R would be associated with deviance perception, and therefore we concentrated on the total score of the DS-R. Any correlations between the DS-R subscales and deviance perception are treated as exploratory.
To measure potential covariates, the Anger subscale from the Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire (AQ; Buss & Perry, 1992) was used to measure trait anger, the Neuroticism subscale of the Big Five Aspects scale (BFAS; DeYoung, Quilty & Peterson, 2007) was used to measure neuroticism, the Intrinsic Religion subscale from Duke Religion Index (DRI; Koenig & Büssing, 2010) was used to measure religiosity, and finally, social conservatism was measured with single self-report item (1-7 scale, extremely liberal to extremely conservative).
We also looked at the conscientiousness subscale of BFAS as an exploratory variable that might be related to trait disgust, social conservatism or moral condemnation. In BFAS,
conscientiousness is broken into two aspects: orderliness and industriousness. While
industriousness measures one’s tendency to get things done, the orderliness subscale measures one’s preference for order and rules, consisting of statements such as “I like order”, “I dislike routine” (reverse-coded), “I see that rules are observed” and “I want every detail taken care of” (see Appendix 4 for all the statements). Orderliness may serve as a disease avoidance strategy, and thus be associated with higher trait disgust. Additionally, the preference for rules and order reflected by orderliness may predispose one to severely condemn acts against moral norms. Orderliness may also be associated with social conservatism, since social conservatives tend to endorse strict adherence to social rules (e.g. McClosky, 1958; Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski & Sulloway, 2003).
Deviance perception. To measure deviance perception, a shape differentiation task
(Okimoto & Gromet, in preparation) was used. This task consists of figures of “perfect” and “imperfect” shapes (Figure 1). For each figure participants were asked: “Is this a triangle?” (or circle, square, rectangle and oval, depending on which shape was currently shown; 1 = definitely
not to 7 = definitely yes). A greater difference between the appraisals of perfect and imperfect shapes indicates greater deviance perception.
Moral stimuli. To examine the relationship between trait disgust and moral
condemnation, participants were presented with six harm scenarios, all set in high school: for example “A female student slaps another girl in the face” (from Chapman & Anderson, 2014, Appendix 1). Participants rated the wrongness of the agent’s behavior on a 1 to 100 scale.
Procedure. The experiment was presented in Qualtrics. Participants were asked to give
their opinion about social situations and answer a number of self-evaluation questionnaires. After giving informed consent, participants first did an anchoring task that was meant to reduce ceiling effects on the subsequent moral scenarios (Appendix 2; Tannenbaum, Uhlmann & Diermeier, 2011). In the anchoring task participants judged the wrongness of three acts: not picking up a piece of litter on a busy street, stealing a wallet, and committing genocide. Participants were told that the first should get a relatively low wrongness rating, the third should get a relatively high wrongness rating, and the second should fall somewhere in between. Participants then judged the wrongness of the actual harm scenarios, and then did the shape differentiation task.
Subsequently, participants completed the questionnaires in counterbalanced order. Finally, demographic information was collected.
Figure 1. Shape stimuli. (Okimoto & Gromet, in preparation).
Confirmatory Results
A total of 150 people were recruited for the study. Sixteen people were excluded because they took less than nine or more than thirty-five minutes to complete the study. Four participants were excluded because they missed five or more questions, and two participants were excluded
because they failed the attention check. In total 22 people were excluded, and thus the final sample size was 128 (mean age=34.1, SD=10.1). Fifty-two were female, seventy-four were male, one reported their gender as other and one did not report gender. Eighty-seven percent were Caucasian, 4% were African American, 5.5% were Asian, 0.8% were Native American or Alaskan Native, and 1.6% were of more than one race.
The total score of the DS-R (α=.86) served as the main independent variable. Wrongness ratings of the moral scenarios were averaged across scenarios to form a moral condemnation score that served as the main dependent variable. Imperfect shape ratings of the shape
differentiation task were averaged and subtracted from averaged perfect shape ratings to form a difference score: higher values indicate greater perception of deviance.
First, zero-order correlations were run between all the variables (Table 1). Our main hypothesis was not confirmed: the DS-R was not correlated with the shape difference score (r=-.13, p=.15). Also, contrary to previous findings (Chapman & Anderson, 2014; Jones & Fitness, 2008), the DS-R was not correlated with the moral condemnation score (r=.09, p=.32).
Additionally, the shape difference score was not related to moral condemnation (r=-.07, p=.41). Contrary to previous findings (Okimoto & Gromet, in preparation), the shape difference score was also not related to social conservatism (r=-.11, p=.20). Because our independent, mediating and dependent variables were not correlated, we did not run a mediation analysis on these variables.
Table 1
Confirmatory correlations in Experiment 1
Note. DS_total = total score of the DS-R, DS_core = core disgust, DS_animalRemind = animal reminder disgust, DS_contam = contamination disgust, Shape difference = deviance perception, Moral condemnation = the average of wrongness ratings, AQ = trait anger, DRI = religiosity, BFAS_neuroticism = neuroticism.
Exploratory Results
In exploratory analyses we were specifically interested in whether the orderliness subscale of conscientiousness is related to trait disgust, social conservatism and moral condemnation. To investigate whether these variables were related, we ran zero-order correlations between the DS-R, social conservatism, moral condemnation and the conscientiousness subscale of BFAS (orderliness & industriousness) (Table 2).
All of the subscales of DS-R were correlated with the orderliness subscale of
conscientiousness (r=.37, p<.01 for the total score, r=.32, p<.01 for core disgust, r=.24, p=.01 for animal reminder disgust and r=.39, p<.01 for contamination disgust). Moral condemnation and
social conservatism were both positively correlated with orderliness (r=.19, p=.03 and r=.19, p=.03, respectively).
Table 2
Exploratory correlations in Experiment 1
Note. DS_total = total score of the DS-R, DS_core = core disgust, DS_animalRemind = animal reminder disgust, DS_contam = contamination disgust, BFAS_conscientious = orderliness + industriousness, BFAS_orderliness = the orderliness score, BFAS_industriousness = the industriousness score, Moral condemnation = the average of wrongness ratings.
We also examined whether orderliness would mediate the relationship between trait disgust and moral condemnation, or the relationship between trait disgust and social
conservatism. To do so, we ran two bias-corrected bootstrapped mediation analyses. The bootstrapped unstandardized indirect effect from DS-R (X) through orderliness (M) to moral condemnation (Y) was .02, and the 95% confidence interval ranged from -.00 to .07, thus indicating that no mediation was present. The bootstrapped unstandardized indirect effect from
DS-R (X) through orderliness (M) to social conservatism (Y) was .08, and the 95% confidence interval ranged from -.01 to .19, indicating that no mediation was present.
Discussion
In Experiment 1 we hypothesized that higher trait disgust would predict harsher moral
condemnation of harm transgressions, and that this relationship would be mediated by greater deviance perception. Since disgust-inducing cues of contamination (e.g. spots of dirt, discolored skin) are often cues of deviance, we predicted that individuals high in trait disgust would also be sensitive to deviance. Furthermore, we proposed that these individuals may perceive moral transgressions as more deviant, and consequently more wrong. However, our hypothesis was not confirmed: trait disgust was not related to deviance perception or moral condemnation.
It may be that the shapes we used to measure deviance perception were not deviant enough to reveal an effect, and that this explains the null finding. Alternatively, the mechanism of how deviance perception could be related to trait disgust or moral condemnation may be different from what we predicted, and thus not detected in this experiment. Nevertheless, since deviance perception was not related to trait disgust, deviance perception could not mediate any relationship between trait disgust and moral condemnation. Interestingly, we also did not replicate the previously found association between deviance perception and social conservatism (Okimoto & Gromet, in preparation).
In Experiment 1 we found no association between trait disgust and moral condemnation, which is surprising since this effect has been previously found (Chapman & Anderson, 2014; Jones & Fitness, 2008). One possibility is that we encountered a Type II error, and the effect was simply not present in this specific sample. Another possibility is that specifics in the study design contributed to the null finding. In this study, prior to rating the moral scenarios on wrongness,
participants did an anchoring task that was meant to reduce ceiling effects. However, it may be that this task anchored participants’ ratings “too well”, reducing crucial variance in wrongness ratings on the subsequent scenarios. It may also be that people who are high in trait disgust consistently choose very high wrongness ratings, and that anchoring had a bigger effect in reducing their ratings than reducing the ratings of those lower in trait disgust. To eliminate this possibility, we left out the anchoring task from Experiment 2, and used a scale from 1 to 7 instead of 1 to 100 for the wrongness ratings.
Though we did not confirm our main hypothesis, we ran exploratory analyses to investigate the personality correlates of trait disgust and moral condemnation. Specifically, we were interested in the orderliness subscale of conscientiousness. We found that orderliness was related to trait disgust, social conservatism and moral condemnation. We also tested whether orderliness would mediate the effect of trait disgust on moral condemnation, or the effect of trait disgust on social conservatism, but neither of these mediations were confirmed. In Experiment 2, we also ran the aforementioned exploratory correlations to test whether the associations between trait disgust, orderliness and social conservatism would replicate.
Experiment 2 Method
Participants. As in Experiment 1, participants were recruited through Amazon
Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and completed the study online in return for monetary compensation. Participants were over 18 years of age and restricted to respondents with U.S. IP addresses and a history of 95% acceptable performance on other MTurk studies.
Questionnaires. As a measure of trait disgust, participants completed the DS-R. As
harm transgressions (Chapman & Anderson, 2014). We had no a priori hypothesis for which subscales of the DS-R would be associated with thinking style, and the total score of the DS-R was of main interest. Any correlations between the DS-R subscales and thinking style are treated as exploratory.
The same questionnaires as in Experiment 1 were collected as potential covariates: AQ for trait anger, BFAS for neuroticism, DRI for religiosity, and the political orientation measure. For exploratory purposes, we also measured paranormal beliefs to investigate whether they would be related to trait disgust. Trait disgust has been associated with “magical” tendencies, such as the laws of sympathetic magic: for instance avoiding clothes of “evil” people in fear of contamination (Rozin et al., 1986). Therefore, the Revised Paranormal Belief Scale (RPBS; Tobacyk, 2004) was included as an exploratory measure to explore whether trait disgust would be associated with paranormal beliefs. The scale consists of seven subscales: traditional religious belief, psi, witchcraft, superstition, spiritualism, extraordinary life forms and precognition.
Thinking style measures. Two performance-based measures that were used to examine
analytical vs. intuitive thinking were the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT; Frederick, 2005; Appendix 3) and three Base Rate problems1 (BR; De Neys & Glumicic, 2008; Appendix 3). The CRT consists of three questions with an intuitive cue the respondent has to override to answer the questions correctly, e.g. “A bat and a ball cost $1.10. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?” The Base Rate problems require the participant to consider prior
1 Three Base Rate problems were included as an additional performance-based measure, since the CRT is so
commonly used that majority of our participants could have seen it before. This measure was added after the proposal was submitted, and thus it is not mentioned in the proposal. However, it was chosen a priori to test the main hypothesis, and is therefore treated as confirmatory. See Appendix 3 for the three Base Rate problems that were used.
knowledge of a probability to answer the questions correctly, and override an intuitive cue that lures her to ignore this probability.
We also included a 10-item version of the Rational-Experiential Inventory (REI; Epstein, Pacini, Denes-Raj & Heier, 1996) to measure self-reported preference for intuitive or analytical thinking. The REI consists of two independent subscales: Faith in Intuition (FI) that measures one’s tendency to rely on his intuitions, and Need for Cognition (NFC) that measures how much one enjoys engaging in / prefers to engage in analytical thinking.
Moral stimuli. To examine the relationship between trait disgust and moral
condemnation, participants were presented with the same six harm scenarios as in Experiment 1 (Appendix 1), and rated the wrongness of the agent’s behavior on a 7-point scale (not at all wrong to extremely wrong), instead of a 1 to 100 –slider scale as in Experiment 1.
Procedure. Experiment 2 was also presented in Qualtrics, and participants were asked to
give their opinion about social situations and answer a number of self-evaluation questionnaires. Participants gave informed consent, but did not do an anchoring task as in Experiment 1. Instead, participants judged the wrongness of the moral scenarios as the first thing. Next, participants did the CRT and the BR, and subsequently completed the REI, DS-R, AQ, BFAS, DRI and the political orientation measure in counterbalanced order. Finally, demographic information was collected.
Confirmatory Results
A total of 148 participants were recruited for the study. Three participants who took less than 7 or more than 35 minutes were excluded, and 21 participants were excluded because they failed to answer an attention check correctly. Thus, the final sample size was 124 (mean age=34.23, SD=11.26). Fifty-four were female and seventy were male. Seventy-six percent were Caucasian,
8% were African American, 11% were Asian, 0.8% were Native American or Alaskan Native, 0.8% were Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, and 3.2% were of more than one race.
The total score of the DS-R (α=.85) served as the main independent variable. Wrongness ratings for the moral scenarios were averaged across scenarios to form a moral condemnation score that served as the main dependent variable. Scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) and the Base Rate problems (BR) were calculated as the number of correct (=analytical) answers, so that lower scores indicate more intuitive thinking. CRT and BR, as well as the Need for
Cognition (NFC) and Faith in Intuition (FI) subscales of REI were treated as mediator variables. First, zero-order correlations were run between all the variables (Table 3). From the measures of intuitive/analytical thinking, a more intuitive self-reported thinking style in the FI subscale of REI was positively associated with the DS-R (r=.18, p=.05). A more intuitive
response tendency in BR was not associated with the total score of the DS-R (r=-.09, p=.27), but it was positively associated with the contamination disgust subscale of the DS-R (r=-.22, p=.02). We did not do a Bonferroni correction since it may be too conservative, but due to multiple comparisons there is an elevated risk of Type I error for subscale-specific correlations. Therefore they should be treated as preliminary until they can be confirmed in an independent sample. From the thinking style measures, the CRT or the NFC subscale of REI were not associated with trait disgust (r=-.04, p=.68 and r=-.10, p=.26, respectively). However, it is noteworthy that 104 out of 124 participants (84%) reported having seen the CRT before, while only 2 (1.6%) had seen the BR before. It is possible that this has rendered the CRT invalid, which could explain why we found slightly different results for the BR and the CRT.
Consistent with earlier findings (Chapman & Anderson, 2014; Jones & Fitness, 2008), but contrary to Experiment 1, higher trait disgust correlated with harsher moral condemnation
(r=.27, p<.01). This suggests that the anchoring task in Experiment 1 may have indeed caused the null finding in Experiment 1 by reducing crucial variance. From the thinking style measures, harsher moral condemnation was associated with more intuitive thinking in BR (-.18, p=.04), but not with FI, NFC or CRT. Because CRT and NFC were not related to trait disgust or moral condemnation, they were dropped from further analysis.
Table 3
Confirmatory correlations in Experiment 2
Note. DS_total = total score of the DS-R, DS_core = core disgust, DS_animalRemind = animal reminder disgust, DS_contam = contamination disgust, CRT = Cognitive Reflection Test, BR = Base Rate problems, REI_NFC = Need for Cognition, REI_FI = Faith in Intuition, Moral condemnation = the average of wrongness ratings, AQ = trait anger, DRI = religiosity, BFAS_neuroticism = neuroticism.
To examine whether the DS-R uniquely predicted moral condemnation when potential covariates were accounted for, we ran a forward regression of the full model with the DS-R, BR, REI_FI, AQ, DRI, neuroticism, gender and social conservatism as predictors for moral
condemnation. In this regression, the DS-R, gender and neuroticism uniquely predicted moral condemnation (Table 4), and the adjusted R Squared was .25. Since the DS-R uniquely predicted moral condemnation, the relationship between trait disgust and moral condemnation was not explained by trait anger, gender, neuroticism, religiosity or social conservatism.
Table 4
Regression on moral condemnation in Experiment 2
Note. The dependent variable is moral condemnation. DS_total = total score of the DS-R, BR = Base Rate problems, REI_FI = Faith in Intuition, AQ = trait anger, DRI = religiosity,
BFAS_neuroticism = neuroticism score.
Since BR was the only thinking style measure that correlated both with trait disgust and moral condemnation, we ran a bias-corrected bootstrapped mediation analysis to investigate whether the indirect effect from DS-R (X) through BR (M) to moral condemnation (Y) differed
from zero. The bootstrapped unstandardized indirect effect was .00, and the 95% confidence interval ranged from -.00 to .13, thus indicating that no mediation was present. An exploratory mediation analysis was also run with the contamination disgust subscale as predictor instead of the whole DS-R, to investigate whether only this type of disgust would mediate the relationship between trait disgust and moral condemnation. The bootstrapped unstandardized indirect effect was .02, and the 95% confidence interval ranged from -.00 to .07, indicating that again no mediation was present. Since the FI subscale of REI was not associated with moral condemnation, no mediation analysis was run between these variables.
Exploratory results
In exploratory analyses we investigated whether the associations between trait disgust,
orderliness, social conservatism and moral condemnation found in Experiment 1 would replicate. Thus, zero-order correlations were run between the DS-R, social conservatism, moral
condemnation and the conscientiousness subscale of BFAS (Table 5). All of the subscales of the DS-R – except animal reminder disgust – correlated with orderliness (r=.22, p=.01 for the total score, r=.18, p=.04 for core disgust and r=.23, p=.01 for contamination disgust). Moral
condemnation was positively correlated with orderliness (r=.20, p=.03), and industriousness (r=.26, p<.01). Contrary to Experiment 1, social conservatism was not correlated with orderliness (r=.02, p=.87).
Table 5
Exploratory correlations in Experiment 2
Note. DS_total = total score of the DS-R, DS_core = core disgust, DS_animalRemind = animal reminder disgust, DS_contam = contamination disgust, BFAS_conscientiousness =
orderliness+industriousness, BFAS_orderliness = the orderliness score, BFAS_industriousness = the industriousness score, Moral condemnation = the average of wrongness ratings.
We also ran zero-order correlations between the DS-R and the Revised Paranormal Belief Scale (RBPS) (Table 6). Results revealed that the DS-R correlated positively with traditional religious belief (r=.23, p=.01) and superstition (r=.21, p=.02). However, since the RPBS has several subscales, there is an elevated risk of Type I error due to multiple comparisons. Hence, the results should be treated as preliminary until they can be confirmed in an independent sample.
Table 6
Exploratory correlations in Experiment 2
Note. DS_total = total score of the DS-R, DS_core = core disgust, DS_animalRemind = animal reminder disgust, DS_contam = contamination disgust, RBPS_total = total score of the RPBS, RP_traditional = traditional religiosity, RP_PSI = belief in PSI, RP_withcraft = belief in
witchcraft, RP_superstition = superstition, RP_spiritualism = spiritualism, RP_extraordinary life = belief in extraordinary life forms, RP_precognition = belief in precognition.
Discussion
In Experiment 2 we hypothesized that higher trait disgust would predict harsher moral
condemnation of harm transgressions, and that this relationship would be mediated by having a more intuitive thinking style. Our hypothesis was partly confirmed: higher trait disgust was associated with harsher moral condemnation, but intuitive thinking did not mediate this relationship.
Contrary to Experiment 1, but consistent with previous evidence (Chapman & Anderson, 2014; Jones & Fitness, 2008), trait disgust was associated with harsher moral condemnation of harm transgressions. There was tentative evidence that trait disgust could be related to intuitive
thinking, as higher trait disgust predicted a more intuitive self-reported thinking style in the Faith in Intuition subscale of REI and weaker performance in the Base Rate problems. There was no association between trait disgust and the Need for Cognition subscale of REI, and there was also no association between trait disgust and the Cognitive Reflection Test. Thus, the evidence for a relationship between trait disgust and intuitive thinking remains inconclusive.
In exploratory analyses, trait disgust and orderliness were related, thus replicating the finding from Experiment 1. Orderliness was also related with harsher moral condemnation as in Experiment 1, but contrary to it, orderliness was not related to social conservatism. In
exploratory analyses we also found an association between trait disgust and superstition.
General discussion
In two experiments, our goal was to investigate why higher trait disgust would predict harsher moral condemnation of harm transgressions. Since harm transgressions do not involve any disgust stimuli, it is plausible that a third variable is mediating the relationship between these variables. We tested two variables that might mediate this relationship: deviance perception and thinking style.
In Experiment 1 we hypothesized that high trait disgust is associated with a tendency to perceive deviance in physical objects, and that this deviance perception mediates the relationship between trait disgust and moral condemnation. We reasoned that cues of contamination are often cues of deviance, and therefore individuals who are sensitive to disgust may also be prone to perceive deviance. This sensitivity to deviance could cause them to judge moral transgressions as more deviant and wrong. However, this hypothesis was not confirmed: trait disgust was not associated with deviance perception or moral condemnation, and deviance perception and moral condemnation were not related to each other.
A possible explanation for why we found no effect of deviance perception is that our measure of it was not adequate in capturing an effect. Perhaps the deviant shapes in our measure were not deviant enough to show variance between participants scoring high and low in trait disgust. Alternatively, it could be that the mechanism of how trait disgust and deviance
perception affect moral condemnation is different from what we predicted. For instance, it may be that trait disgust does not influence the cognitive perception of deviance in general, when the stimulus is totally stripped off of any disgust-inducing properties or socio-moral relevance. If people high in trait disgust do perceive moral transgressors as more deviant, it is possible that this perception of deviance is tied to the specific moral transgression. If this were the case, future studies should tap directly into perception of deviance of the moral transgression, rather than to isolate cognitive perception of deviance from the socio-moral context. Furthermore, it may also simply be that trait disgust is not related to deviance perception, and that something else explains the possible association between trait disgust and moral condemnation of harm transgressions.
In Experiment 2, we hypothesized that high trait disgust would be related to a more intuitive thinking style, and that this would mediate the relationship between trait disgust and moral condemnation. The characteristics of disgust to promote quick and instinctive judgments of objects may spill over to a more general cognitive tendency for intuitive thinking, and this may in turn affect moral condemnation. Someone with an intuitive thinking tendency may be quick to judge a moral transgression as wrong, rather than to ponder upon factors that could mitigate this judgment. In contrast, someone with an analytical thinking tendency may consider different explanations for the transgressors behavior, and consequently refrain from making too harsh of a judgment.
The hypothesis in Experiment 2 was partly confirmed: there was tentative evidence that trait disgust is related to intuitive thinking, and that intuitive thinking could be related to moral condemnation. Also, consistent with previous findings (Chapman & Anderson, 2014; Jones & Fitness, 2008) but contrary to Experiment 1, trait disgust predicted harsher moral condemnation. The Faith in Intuition subscale of REI, which measures how much one trusts and relies on one’s intuitions was positively correlated with trait disgust. Additionally, poor performance in Base Rate problems, which measure how well the participant is able to override her intuitions, positively correlated with some aspects of trait disgust. There was no association between trait disgust and the Need for Cognition subscale of REI. There was also no association between trait disgust and the Cognitive Reflection Test, but it is noteworthy that the overwhelming majority of participants had seen the measure before. This may have rendered it invalid: encountering the test before gives the subject more opportunities to think about the right answer, and it can also make him curious enough to check the right answers online. In sum, the evidence for a
relationship between trait disgust and intuitive thinking was not consistent across the board and thus inconclusive.
Intuitive thinking in Base Rate problems, but not in the other measures, was associated with harsher moral condemnation. This can be cautiously interpreted as evidence for the idea that intuitive thinking is related to harsher moral condemnation of harm transgressions. However, it is not clear why there was only an association with the Base Rate problems. Unlike the self-report measure REI, the Base Rate Problems and the Cognitive Reflection Test measure performance in analytical thinking, and this may partly account for the difference in results. Yet, it is hard to say why only the performance in Base Rate problems and not in the Cognitive Reflection Test predicted harsher moral condemnation. Intuitive thinking in the Base Rate problems also did not
mediate the relationship between trait disgust and moral condemnation, and thus does not explain why people who are easily disgusted are also more morally condemning. Moreover, since the association between intuitive thinking and moral condemnation was not consistent across the board, further research is needed before drawing any strong conclusions.
In both experiments, exploratory analyses showed an association between trait disgust and the orderliness subscale of conscientiousness. Previous research has revealed an association between conscientiousness and trait disgust (Tybur & de Vries, 2013; Druschel & Sherman, 1999), but it is noteworthy that in the current experiments conscientiousness was broken into two aspects, and it was specifically the orderliness aspect that was associated with trait disgust. While the industriousness aspect of conscientiousness reflects one’s tendency to get things done and carry out one’s plans, the orderliness aspect reflects one’s preference for order, tidiness, rules, details and routine.
One explanation for why specifically orderliness is related to trait disgust could be that orderliness acts as a disease avoidance strategy. This may work in two ways. First, keeping physical order helps to prevent bacterial growth and pest infestation, and makes it easier to notice potentially infectious rodents and insects. Second, keeping social order by seeing that rules are observed and that people act in an orderly fashion can prevent other members of the group from catching infections, or threatening the social norms that serve to protect the ingroup from contamination.
In Experiment 1, orderliness was also associated with social conservatism. A trait that has been associated with social conservatism is a need for order and structure, which may help conservatives manage threat and uncertainty (see Jost et al., 2003 for a meta-analysis). It may be that the association between social conservatism and orderliness reflects this preference. On the
other hand, it may be that orderliness is associated with rigid adherence to rules and preference for hierarchical social order: this is characteristic of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), a form of social conservatism (Altemeyer, 1998). There is some evidence for an association between conscientiousness and right-wing authoritarianism, but this evidence is not fully consistent across studies (Butler, 2000). However, these studies did not break down conscientiousness to
orderliness and industriousness. It may be that it is specifically the orderliness aspect of conscientiousness that is associated with forms of social conservatism that promote strict adherence to norms and rules.
In the exploratory analyses we further tested whether orderliness would mediate the relationship between trait disgust and social conservatism, and found no mediation. However, in this study we did not break down social conservatism to RWA and social dominance orientation (SDO). While RWA is concerned with rigid adherence to rules and preference for strict social hierarchy, SDO reflects the extent to which one desires his ingroup to have a privileged position in a community or a society (Pratto, Sidanius, Stallworth & Malle, 1994). It is an intriguing avenue for further research to test whether orderliness could mediate the effect of trait disgust on specifically RWA form of social conservatism. In sum, while both experiments provide evidence for the idea that trait disgust and orderliness are related, the evidence for a relation between orderliness and social conservatism remains inconclusive.
Interestingly, higher scores on orderliness predicted harsher moral condemnation in both experiments. It is possible that participants who see order and rules as important also more strongly condemn transgressors who act against them. However, orderliness did not mediate the effect of trait disgust on moral condemnation, and thus does not answer the question of why they may be related. An interesting avenue for future research would be to examine whether people
high in orderliness are more condemning solely of moral transgressions, or also of other violations of social norms.
In Experiment 2, exploratory analyses revealed an association between trait disgust and superstition. Past research has shown that disgust has certain “magical” properties in that a disgusting stimulus continues to be disgusting even if people know that it cannot actually contaminate (Rozin et al. 1986). For example, people are reluctant to eat soup that has been stirred with a new, unused comb (Rozin et al., 1986). It may be that people who are high in trait disgust are sensitive to perceive “invisible” associations: contamination resulting from a disgust-inducing stimulus, and bad luck resulting from breaking a mirror. Additionally, these
associations may not be easily disconfirmed: despite knowing that the comb touching the soup is unused and that there is no physical way that breaking a mirror can cause bad luck, one can still continue to perceive the comb as disgusting and believe that bad luck will result from breaking a mirror. However, future studies should replicate this finding to and tap into it in detail to be able to better explain it.
Conclusion
To sum up, these two experiments did not support the idea that deviance perception or thinking style would explain why trait disgust is associated with moral condemnation of harm
transgressions. The experiments do open new avenues of research by suggesting that certain traits – intuitive thinking, orderliness and superstition – cluster around trait disgust. Still, the ultimate question of whether and why trait disgust is associated with moral condemnation of harm transgressions remains unanswered.
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Appendix 1. Moral stimuli (Chapman & Anderson, 2014).
In gym class, a student throws a basketball at the back of another student's head, hitting him. A student puts out her foot and trips up another student who is running down the hall.
One student pushes another student, who falls to the ground.
One student laughs at another student who failed a math test, saying that he must be stupid. After school, a student throws a hard, icy snowball in another student's face.
A female student slaps another girl in the face.
Appendix 2. The anchoring task (Tannenbaum, Uhlmann & Diermeier, 2011).
For each vignette, you will need to determine from 0 to 100 how immoral each act is. An act that you feel is extremely immoral should receive a high score, and an act that you feel is extremely benign should receive a low score.
To start, rate the following three acts:
1. The act of seeing a small piece of litter in the middle of a busy street, and not picking it up. ________
2. The act of carefully planning and ordering the genocide of a million people. ________ 3. The act of stealing the wallet of a stranger. ________
Act 1 should get a rating at or near 0, Act 2 should be at or near 100, and Act 3 should be somewhere in between. Please make sure this is true for your ratings, and if not, think a bit before going on.
Appendix 3. The Base Rate problems and the CRT.
BR (De Neys & Glumicic, 2008)
In a study, 1000 people were tested. Among the participants there were 997 nurses and 3 doctors. Paul is a randomly chosen participant of this study.
Paul is 34 years old. He lives in a beautiful home in a posh suburb. He is well spoken and very interested in politics. He invests a lot of time in his career.
What is most likely? - Paul is a nurse - Paul is a doctor
In a study, 1000 people were tested. Among the participants there were 4 men and 996 women. Jo is a randomly chosen participant of this study.
Jo is 23 years old and is finishing a degree in engineering. On Friday nights, Jo likes to go out cruising with friends while listening to loud music and drinking beer.
What is most likely? - Jo is a man - Jo is a woman
In a study, 1000 people were tested. Among the participants there were 5 sixteen-year olds and 995 fifty-year olds. Ellen is a randomly chosen participant of this study.
Ellen likes to listen to hip hop and rap music. She enjoys wearing tight shirts and jeans. She’s fond of dancing and has a small nose piercing.
What is most likely? - Ellen is sixteen - Ellen is fifty
CRT (Frederick, 2005)
Below are three items that vary in difficulty. Answer as many as you can. (1) A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? _____ cents
(2) If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets? _____ minutes
(3) In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake? _____ days
Appendix 4. Items from the orderliness subscale of conscientiousness (BFAS;DeYoung, Quilty & Peterson, 2007).
Answers range from “never or very rarely true” to “very often or always true”. Reverse-coded items are in italics.
Orderliness
I leave my belongings around I like order
I keep things tidy I follow a schedule
I am not bothered by messy people I want everything to be “just right” I am not bothered by disorder I dislike routine
I see that rules are observed I want every detail taken care of
