Our sense of morality helps us to do the right thing even in
situations where there is a temptation to do something wrong. For example, when you engage in an action
that you know is morally wrong, you experience guilt. When you see others engaging in an act that
is morally wrong, you often judge them.
Those judgments may also serve to keep you from engaging in those acts
yourself.
An interesting observation from this research is that
people’s moral judgments are also related to disgust. When people witness (or hear about) a moral
transgression, they often get a disgust reaction. In addition, feelings of disgust increase
people’s sense of moral outrage. A
fascinating element of this work is that the sense of moral outrage may
increase even when the feeling of disgust comes from another source.
The idea is simple.
As with most feelings, we look around the world trying to find the
source of those feelings. Most of the
time, those sources are obvious. Imagine
you are walking down the street, and suddenly you see a car speeding toward
you. You jump back onto the sidewalk,
and feel a combination of fear (that you were almost hit) and relief (that you
were not). It is pretty clear that the
reason for these feelings is that you were almost hit by a car.
In some cases, the source is less obvious. You might wake up in the morning feeling some
stress because you have an exam coming up or a big presentation at work. That underlying stress may make you anxious
about making a big purchase, even though the stress came from another source.
The same thing can happen with disgust. Encountering a disgusting situation can
influence other judgments about morality.
A fascinating set of experiments by Lotte Van Dillen, Reine van der Wal,
and Kees van den Bos in the September, 2012 issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin explored individual
differences in this tendency to misattribute disgust in moral judgments.
They pointed out that people differ in their level of attentional
control. Consider the classic Stroop
task. In the Stroop task, color words
are written in fonts of different colors.
People are asked to name the color of the font. The task is easy when the font is the same
color named by the word. That is, people
are fast to say that the font is red when the word is RED. The task is hard when the font is a different
color than the one named by the word.
So, people are slow to say that the font is red when the word is GREEN.
There are individual differences in how hard people find
this task. Some people find it very hard
to name the font when the word is different, while others are able to guide
their attention toward the font color more exclusively and so they find the
task easier.
In one experiment, the researchers told participants that
they were going to do a series of unrelated experiments. First, they gave participants a Stroop task
and measured the difference in speed for naming the font when the word named the
same color or a different color. That
speed was a measure of the ability to control attention. Next, participants read sentences that either
described mildly disgusting events (“Ann bit into an apple and found a worm
inside.”) or neutral events (“Ann bit into an apple that she brought for lunch.”).
Finally, participants read a story about someone who found a
wallet and decided to keep it. They were
asked to rate how strongly they disapproved of that action. Participants who read neutral sentences
tended to rate this action as moderately severe. Participants who found it easy to identify
the font color when the word named a different color (so they had a high degree
of attentional control) also rated the action as moderately severe. However, those who found it hard to identify
the font color when the word named a different color (so they had a low degree
of attentional control) rated that they strongly disapproved of the action.
Another study in this series manipulated the instructions
given to people viewing disgusting events.
Some were told to feel as strongly as possible, while others were told
to distract themselves while viewing the disgusting events. Later in the
session, participants read a story about someone who leaves his/her family
after having an affair and were asked how strongly they disapproved.
In this case, people who were asked to feel when viewing the
disgusting events rated themselves as more disapproving of the person in the
story than people who were asked to distract themselves.
Putting all of this together, then, you can use your sense
of disgust to help you determine whether an action is morally right. You are prone to use any feeling of disgust
you are experiencing to make this judgment.
However, the higher the level of your ability to focus attention, the more
likely you are to restrict your use of disgust to those feelings that are
actually related to the event you are judging.
