Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Paradox of Moral Disgust and Three Possible Resolutions

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
The Handbook of Disgust Research

Abstract

There is a fundamental paradox in the concept of moral disgust and in the evidence for it, an incongruity between the earthy biological origin of disgust and the high-minded nature of moral judgment. This paradox is not just aesthetic, but bedevils the process of properly defining moral disgust. In reviewing the research literature, I address the assumption that disgust is fully involved in all situations of emotional moral disapproval. I consider two alternative propositions: that “moral disgust” is a full instance of the disgust emotion, but not germane to all moral situations; and that “moral disgust” is relevant to all moral situations, but is only a partial expression of some components of the biologically relevant emotion.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 129.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 169.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Abitan, A., & Krauth-Gruber, S. (2015). The two sides of disgust: A lexical and thematic content analysis of narratives of personally experienced physical and moral disgust. Social Science Information, 54(4), 470-496.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Alderman, J., Dollar, K. M., & Kozlowski, L. T. (2010). Commentary: understanding the origins of anger, contempt, and disgust in public health policy disputes: applying moral psychology to harm reduction debates. Journal of Public Health Policy, 31(1), 1-16.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Björklund, F., Haidt, J., & Murphy, S. (2000). Moral dumbfounding: When intuition finds no reason. Lund Psychological Reports, 1, 1–15.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cannon, P. R., Schnall, S., & White, M. (2011). Transgressions and expressions: Affective facial muscle activity predicts moral judgments. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2(3), 325–331.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chakroff, A., Russell, P. S., Piazza, J., & Young, L. (2017). From impure to harmful: Asymmetric expectations about immoral agents. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 69, 201-209.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chapman, H. A., & Anderson, A. K. (2013). Things rank and gross in nature: A review and synthesis of moral disgust. Psychological Bulletin, 139(2), 300-327.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Chapman, H. A., Kim, D. A., Susskind, J. M., & Anderson, A. K. (2009). In bad taste: Evidence for the oral origins of moral disgust. Science, 323(5918), 1222-1226.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Clifford, S., Iyengar, V., Cabeza, R., & Sinnott-Armstrong, W. (2015). Moral foundations vignettes: A standardized stimulus database of scenarios based on moral foundations theory. Behavior Research Methods, 47(4), 1178-1198.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Curtis, V. (2013). Don’t look, don’t touch: The science behind revulsion. Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Cusimano, C., Royzman, E. B., Leeman, R. F., & Metas, S. (2018). Methodology is the core disgust problem: Response to Inbar and Scott (2018). Judgment and Decision Making, 13(6), 639.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dawkins, R. (1993). Viruses of the mind. In Dahlbom, B. (Ed.), Dennett and his Critics (pp. 13-27). Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ekman, P. (Ed.). (2006). Darwin and facial expression: A century of research in review. Malor Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Frank, R. H. (1988). Passions within reason: The strategic role of the emotions. WW Norton & Co.

    Google Scholar 

  • Giner-Sorolla, R., & Chapman, H. A. (2017). Beyond purity: Moral disgust toward bad character. Psychological Science, 28(1), 80–91.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Giner-Sorolla, R., Caswell, T. A., Bosson, J., & Hettinger, V. (2012). Emotions in sexual morality: Testing the separate elicitors of anger and disgust. Cognition & Emotion, 26, 1208-1222.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Giner-Sorolla, R., Kupfer, T., & Sabo, J. (2018). What makes moral disgust special? An integrative functional review. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 57, 223-289.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Goldenberg, J. L. (2005). The body stripped down: An existential account of the threat posed by the physical body. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(4), 224-228.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Graham, J., Haidt, J., & Nosek, B. A. (2009). Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(5), 1029–1046.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gray, K., & Keeney, J. E. (2015). Impure or just weird? Scenario sampling bias raises questions about the foundation of morality. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 6(8), 859–868.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gray, K., Schein, C., & Ward, A. F. (2014). The myth of harmless wrongs in moral cognition: Automatic dyadic completion from sin to suffering. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(4), 1600–1615.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gutierrez, R., & Giner-Sorolla, R. (2007). Anger, disgust, and presumption of harm as reactions to taboo-breaking behaviors. Emotion, 7, 853-868.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Gutierrez, R., Giner-Sorolla, R., & Vasiljevic, M. (2012). Just an anger synonym? Moral context influences predictors of disgust word use. Cognition & Emotion, 26, 53-64.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haidt, J. (2001). The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 108(4), 814–834.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Haidt, J. (2003). The moral emotions. In R. J. Davidson, K. R. Scherer, & H. H. Goldsmith (Eds.), Handbook of affective sciences (pp. 852–870). Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haidt, J., Koller, S. H., & Dias, M. G. (1993). Affect, culture, and morality, or is it wrong to eat your dog?. Journal of personality and social psychology, 65(4), 613.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Helweg-Larsen, M. (2014). Does moralization motivate smokers to quit? A longitudinal study of representative samples of smokers in the United States and Denmark. Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 16(10), 1379-1386.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Herz, R. S. (2011). PROP taste sensitivity is related to visceral but not moral disgust. Chemosensory Perception, 4(3), 72.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hutcherson, C. A., & Gross, J. J. (2011). The moral emotions: A social–functionalist account of anger, disgust, and contempt. Journal of Personality and Social psychology, 100(4), 719-737.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Inbar, Y., & Pizarro, D. A. (2014). Pollution and purity in moral and political judgment. In H. Sarkissian, & J. Wright (Eds.), Advances in experimental moral psychology (pp. 111-129). Bloomsbury Academic.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jack, R. E., Sun, W., Delis, I., Garrod, O. G., & Schyns, P. G. (2016). Four not six: Revealing culturally common facial expressions of emotion. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145(6), 708.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kayyal, M. H., Pochedly, J., McCarthy, A., & Russell, J. A. (2015). On the limits of the relation of disgust to judgments of immorality. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 951.

    Article  PubMed  PubMed Central  Google Scholar 

  • Kollareth, D., & Russell, J. A. (2017). On the emotions associated with violations of three moral codes (community, autonomy, divinity). Motivation and Emotion, 41(3), 322-342.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kollareth, D., & Russell, J. A. (2019). Disgust and the sacred: Do people react to violations of the sacred with the same emotion they react to something putrid?. Emotion, 19(1), 37.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Konishi, N., Himichi, T., & Ohtsubo, Y. (2020). Heart rate reveals the difference between disgust and anger in the domain of morality. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, 14(3), 284–298.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kupfer, T. R., & Giner-Sorolla, R. (2017). Communicating moral motives: The social signaling function of disgust. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 8(6), 632-640.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kupfer, T. R., & Giner-Sorolla, R. (2021). Reputation management as an alternative explanation for the “contagiousness” of immorality. Evolution and Human Behavior, 42, 130-139.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kupfer, T. R., Inbar, Y., & Tybur, J. M. (2020). Reexamining the role of intent in moral judgements of purity violations. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 91, 104043.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Landy, J. F., & Goodwin, G. P. (2015). Does incidental disgust amplify moral judgment? A meta-analytic review of experimental evidence. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(4), 518–536.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Maio, G. R., & Olson, J. M. (1998). Values as truisms: Evidence and implications. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(2), 294.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McHugh, C., McGann, M., Igou, E. R., & Kinsella, E. L. (2017). Searching for moral dumbfounding: Identifying measurable indicators of moral dumbfounding. Collabra: Psychology, 3(1), 23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Molho, C., Tybur, J. M., Güler, E., Balliet, D., & Hofmann, W. (2017). Disgust and anger relate to different aggressive responses to moral violations. Psychological Science, 28(5), 609-619. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617692000

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Nabi, R. L. (2002). The theoretical versus the lay meaning of disgust: Implications for emotion research. Cognition & Emotion, 16(5), 695-703.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Navarrete, C. D., & Fessler, D. (2003). Meat is good to taboo: Dietary proscriptions as a product of the interaction of psychological mechanisms and social processes. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 3(1), 1-40.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nummenmaa, L., Glerean, E., Hari, R., & Hietanen, J. K. (2014). Bodily maps of emotions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(2), 646-651.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ortony, A., Clore, G. L., & Collins, A. (1990). The cognitive structure of emotions. Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ottaviani, C., Mancini, F., Petrocchi, N., Medea, B., & Couyoumdjian, A. (2013). Autonomic correlates of physical and moral disgust. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 89(1), 57–62.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Piazza, J., Russell, P. S., & Sousa, P. (2013). Moral emotions and the envisaging of mitigating circumstances for wrongdoing. Cognition & Emotion, 27(4), 707-722.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ritter, R. S., Preston, J. L., Salomon, E., & Relihan-Johnson, D. (2016). Imagine no religion: Heretical disgust, anger and the symbolic purity of mind. Cognition & Emotion, 30(4), 778-796.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rolfe, H., & Giner-Sorolla, R. (2020). Moral and non-moral anger and disgust in judgments of music. Unpublished manuscript. University of Kent.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rottman, J., & Young, L. (2019). Specks of dirt and tons of pain: Dosage distinguishes impurity from harm. Psychological Science, 30(8), 1151-1160.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Royzman, E. B., Leeman, R. F., & Sabini, J. (2008). “You make me sick”: Moral dyspepsia as a reaction to third-party sibling incest. Motivation & Emotion, 32(2), 100-108.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Royzman, E., Atanasov, P., Landy, J. F., Parks, A., & Gepty, A. (2014). CAD or MAD? Anger (not disgust) as the predominant response to pathogen-free violations of the divinity code. Emotion, 14(5), 892–907.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rozin, P. (1999). The process of moralization. Psychological Science, 10(3), 218-221.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rozin, P., & Singh, L. (1999). The moralization of cigarette smoking in the United States. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 8(3), 321-337.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rozin, P., Millman, L., & Nemeroff, C. (1986). Operation of the laws of sympathetic magic in disgust and other domains. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50(4), 703.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rozin, P., Lowery, L., Imada, S., & Haidt, J. (1999). The CAD triad hypothesis: A mapping between three moral emotions (contempt, anger, disgust) and three moral codes (community, autonomy, divinity). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(4), 574–586.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Rubenking, B., & Lang, A. (2014). Captivated and grossed out: An examination of processing core and sociomoral disgusts in entertainment media. Journal of Communication, 64(3), 543-565.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Russell, P. S., & Giner-Sorolla, R. (2011a). Moral anger, but not moral disgust, responds to intentionality. Emotion, 11, 233-240.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Russell, P. S., & Giner-Sorolla, R. (2011b). Social justifications for moral emotions: When reasons for disgust are less elaborated than for anger. Emotion, 11, 637-646.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Russell, P. S., & Giner-Sorolla, R. (2013). Bodily-moral disgust: What it is, how it is different from anger and why it is an unreasoned emotion. Psychological Bulletin, 139, 328-351.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Sabo, J. S., & Giner-Sorolla, R. (2017). Imagining wrong: Fictitious contexts mitigate condemnation of harm more than impurity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 146(1), 134.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schein, C., & Gray, K. (2018). The theory of dyadic morality: Reinventing moral judgment by redefining harm. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 22(1), 32-70.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Schein, C., Ritter, R. S., & Gray, K. (2016). Harm mediates the disgust-immorality link. Emotion, 16(6), 862.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Scherer, K. R. (1984). On the nature and function of emotion: A component process approach. In K. R. Scherer & P. Ekman (Eds.), Approaches to emotion (pp. 293-318). Psychology Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schnall, S., Haidt, J., Clore, G. L., & Jordan, A. H. (2015). Landy and Goodwin (2015) confirmed most of our findings then drew the wrong conclusions. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(4), 537-538.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Sell, A., Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2009). Formidability and the logic of human anger. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(35), 15073-15078.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shweder, R. A., Much, N. C., Mahapatra, M., & Park, L. (1997). The ‘big three’ of morality (autonomy, community, and divinity) and the ‘big three’ explanations of suffering. In A. M. Brandt & P. Rozin (Eds.), Morality and health (pp. 119–169). Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Simpson, J., Carter, S., Anthony, S. H., & Overton, P. G. (2006). Is disgust a homogeneous emotion?. Motivation and Emotion, 30(1), 31-41.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Skarlicki, D. P., Hoegg, J., Aquino, K., & Nadisic, T. (2013). Does injustice affect your sense of taste and smell? The mediating role of moral disgust. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(5), 852-859.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Tracy, J. L., Steckler, C. M., & Heltzel, G. (2019). The physiological basis of psychological disgust and moral judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 116(1), 15.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Turiel, E. (1977). Distinct conceptual and developmental domains: social convention and morality. Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, 25, 77-116.

    PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Tybur, J. M., Lieberman, D., Kurzban, R., & DeScioli, P. (2013). Disgust: Evolved function and structure. Psychological Review, 120(1), 65-84.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  • Yoder, A. M., Widen, S. C., & Russell, J. A. (2016). The word disgust may refer to more than one emotion. Emotion, 16(3), 301.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Psychology, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

    Roger Giner-Sorolla

Authors
  1. Roger Giner-Sorolla
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Roger Giner-Sorolla .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Health and Related Research, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Philip A. Powell

  2. Department of Psychological Medicine, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Nathan S. Consedine

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Giner-Sorolla, R. (2021). The Paradox of Moral Disgust and Three Possible Resolutions. In: Powell, P.A., Consedine, N.S. (eds) The Handbook of Disgust Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84486-8_8

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation