Disgust - Disgust and Morality

Disgust and Morality

Although disgust was first thought to be a motivation for humans to only physical contaminants, it has since been expanded to apply to moral and social moral contaminants as well. The similarities between these types of disgust can especially be seen in the way people react to the contaminants. For example, if someone stumbles upon a pool of vomit, he/she will do whatever possible to put as much distance between himself/herself and the vomit as possible, which can include pinching the nose, closing the eyes, or running away. Similarly, when a group experiences someone who cheats, murders, or rapes another member of the group, its reaction is to shun or expel that person from the group.

Jones & Fitness (2008) coined the term "moral hypervigilance" to describe the phenomenon that individuals who are prone to physical disgust will also be prone to moral disgust. The link between physical disgust and moral disgust in the United States can especially be seen in the fact that our culture often refers to criminals as "slime" and criminal activity as "stinking" or being "fishy". Furthermore, people often try to block out the stimuli of morally repulsive images in much the same way that they would block out the stimuli of a physically repulsive image. When people see an image of rape or murder, they often turn their heads away to inhibit the incoming visual stimuli from the photograph just like they would if they saw a decomposing body.

Horberg et al. found that disgust plays a crucial role in the development and intensification of moral judgments of purity. In other words, the feeling of disgust is often associated with a feeling that some image of what is pure has been violated. For example, a vegetarian might feel disgust after seeing another person eating meat because he/she has a view of vegetarianism as the pure state-of-being. When this state-of-being is violated, the vegetarian feels disgust.

Furthermore, disgust is uniquely associated with purity judgments but not of what is just/unjust or what is harmful/caregiving while other emotions such as fear, anger, and sadness are "unrelated to moral judgments of purity".

Research that has been conducted suggests that the experience of disgust intensifies the severity of moral judgments. Moral judgments can be traditionally defined or thought of as directed by divine standards such as impartiality and respect towards others for their well-being. From more recent theoretical and empirical information, it can be suggested that morality may be guided by basic affective processes. Jonathan Haidt proposed that one’s instant judgments about morality are experienced as a "flash of intuition" and that these affective perceptions operate rapidly, associatively, and outside of consciousness. From this, moral intuitions are believed to be stimulated prior to conscious moral cognitions which correlates with having a greater influence on moral judgments. It has been hypothesized that disgust is most strongly connected to the evaluations of morality. Disgust is also theorized as an evaluative emotion that can control moral behavior. When one experiences disgust, this emotion might signal that certain behaviors, objects, or people are to be avoided in order to preserve their purity. Research has established that when the idea or concept of cleanliness is made salient then people make less severe moral judgments of others. From this particular finding, it can be suggested that this reduces the experience of disgust and the ensuing threat of psychological impurity diminishes the apparent severity of moral transgressions. Experimental research has begun to disclose a direct functional correlation between disgust and morality. One discovery that has been revealed from theorists is that induced disgust results in a more severe moral judgment on non-moral behaviors. Some other research suggests that an individual’s level of disgust sensitivity is due to their particular experience of disgust. One’s disgust sensitivity can be either high or low. The higher one’s disgust sensitivity is means that there is a greater tendency for one to make a stricter moral judgment. Disgust sensitivity can also relate to various aspects of moral values, which can have a negative or positive impact. For example, Disgust sensitivity is associated with moral hypervigilance, which means people who have higher disgust sensitivity are more likely to think that other people who are suspects of a crime are more guilty. They also associate them as being morally evil and criminal, thus endorsing them to harsher punishment in the setting of a court.