Disgust as embodied moral judgment

People who seem disgusting seem more immoral

Despite unresolved questions about replicability, a substantial number of studies find that disgust influences and arises from evaluations of immoral behavior and people. Departing from prior emphases, the current research examines a novel, related question: Are people who are viewed as disgusting (i.e., people whose habits seem disgusting) perceived as more immoral than typical or unusual people? Four experiments examined this, also exploring the downstream impacts of moral character judgments. Adults who seemed disgusting were regarded as more immoral for purity and non-purity violations (Experiment 1) and less praiseworthy for prosocial acts (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3, an 8-year-old with typical (but seemingly disgusting) habits was rated as "naughtier" and likelier to misbehave than an atypical child who loved vegetables and disliked sweets. Experiment 4 revealed how, when no behavioral information is available, beliefs about target disgust influence beliefs about future behavior, helping explain why seemingly disgusting targets are viewed as more immoral, but not always more punishable for their bad behavior.

Disgust as a basic, sexual, and moral emotion

Disgust is a basic emotion that increases the organism's survival success by preventing the transfer of pathogens. In this regard, it directs cognitive processes and motivates avoidance behaviors that prevent pathogens from entering the body. Moreover, disgust has many specific characteristics that distinguish it from other basic emotions. Firstly, unlike other basic emotions, it contaminates neutral objects around it and causes difficult-to-change learning. Another specific characteristic of disgust is that it depends on ideational processes. Objects, situations, and behaviors that do not contain pathogens can also cause disgust. In this regard, disgust appears not only as a basic emotion but also as different adaptations in different fields. In this context, two distinct adaptations of disgust stand out: sexual and moral disgust. These two adaptations of disgust benefit from disgust-related behaviors and motivations in different ways. Sexual disgust works as a gene protection mechanism, while moral disgust helps maintain social rules. The specific characteristics of disgust and its effects on cognitive processes such as attention and memory interact. In conclusion, the multifaceted structure of disgust shows that it needs to be studied more in the subfields of psychology. (Strohminger, Philos Compass 9:478-493, 2014) defines disgust as a psychological nebula that needs to be discovered. However, it is observed that disgust has not been adequately addressed. This review aims to comprehensively explore unique characteristics and diverse aspects of disgust, shedding light on its significance from various perspectives. This study underscores the broader understanding of disgust and its pivotal role in psychological research.

Within your rights: Dissociating wrongness and permissibility in moral judgement

Are we ever morally permitted to do what is morally wrong? It seems intuitive that we are, but evidence for dissociations among judgement of permissibility and wrongness is relatively scarce. Across four experiments (N = 1438), we show that people judge that some behaviours can be morally wrong and permissible. The dissociations arise because these judgements track different morally relevant aspects of everyday moral encounters. Judgements of individual rights predicted permissibility but not wrongness, while character assessment predicted wrongness but not permissibility. These findings suggest a picture in which moral evaluation is granular enough to express reasoning about different types of normative considerations, notably the possibility that people can exercise their rights in morally problematic ways.

Disgust Processing and Potential Relationships with Behaviors in Autism

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

While there are reports of differences in emotion processing in autism, it is less understood whether the emotion of disgust, in particular, plays a significant role in these effects. Here, we review literature on potential disgust processing differences in autism and its possible associations with autistic traits.

RECENT FINDINGS

In autism, there is evidence for differences in physical disgust processing, pica behaviors, attention away from other's disgust facial expressions, and differences in neural activity related to disgust processing. In typically developing individuals, disgust processing is related to moral processing, but modulated by individual differences in interoception and alexithymia. Autistic individuals may experience atypical disgust, which may lead to difficulty avoiding contaminants and affect socio-emotional processing. In autism, such outcomes may lead to increased occurrences of illness, contribute to gastrointestinal issues, diminish vicarious learning of disgust expression and behaviors, and potentially contribute to differences in processes related to moral reasoning, though further research is needed.

Little Evidence for the Role of Disgust Sensitivity in Implicit Disgust to Images of White People Engaged in Injecting Drug Use (IDU)

Background: Previous research has shown that People Who Inject Drugs (PWID) are subject to public stigma, which affects access to, and provision and quality of, treatment and support services. Less is known about the socio-cognitive processes that support the development and maintenance of public stigma toward PWID. The present study investigated the role of disgust sensitivity in implicit disgust to injecting drug use. Methods: 126 participants took part in an online Implicit Association Task (IAT) measuring implicit disgust to pictorial stimuli of injecting drug use or medical injecting. Participants also completed The Disgust Scale Revised, Injecting Phobia Scale (Short Form), Attitudes to People Who Use Drugs (PWUD) scale and a substance use inventory. Results: Average IAT score was negative indicating significantly higher implicit disgust to injecting drug use. Hierarchical linear regression found that injecting phobia predicted implicit disgust to injecting drug use. Questionnaire measures of disgust did not predict implicit disgust. While animal reminder disgust and injecting phobia were significantly correlated with each other, animal reminder disgust did not predict implicit disgust scores. Conclusions: On the basis of our findings, stigma toward PWID may not be a result of feelings of disgust toward injecting drug use. We discuss findings in the context of the underlying cortical processes supporting implicit and explicit representations of disgust. Future research should seek to investigate neurophysiological evidence for disgust to and stigmatization of injecting drug use and the potential role of domains of disgust in this.

The Problem of Purity in Moral Psychology

Academic AbstractThe idea of "purity" transformed moral psychology. Here, we provide the first systematic review of this concept. Although often discussed as one construct, we reveal ~9 understandings of purity, ranging from respecting God to not eating gross things. This striking heterogeneity arises because purity-unlike other moral constructs-is not understood by what it is but what it isn't: obvious interpersonal harm. This poses many problems for moral psychology and explains why purity lacks convergent and divergent validity and why purity is confounded with politics, religion, weirdness, and perceived harm. Because purity is not a coherent construct, it cannot be a distinct basis of moral judgment or specially tied to disgust. Rather than a specific moral domain, purity is best understood as a loose set of themes in moral rhetoric. These themes are scaffolded on cultural understandings of harm-the broad, pluralistic harm outlined by the Theory of Dyadic Morality.

How does disgust regulate social rejection? a mini-review

The need to belong is a fundamental aspect of human nature. Over the past two decades, researchers have uncovered many harmful effects of social rejection. However, less work has examined the emotional antecedents to rejection. The purpose of the present article was to explore how disgust--an emotion linked to avoidance and social withdrawal--serves as an important antecedent to social rejection. We argue that disgust affects social rejection through three routes. First, disgust encourages stigmatization, especially of those who exhibit cues of infectious disease. Second, disgust and disease-avoidance give rise to cultural variants (e.g., socially conservative values and assortative sociality), which mitigate social interaction. Third, when the self is perceived as a source of contamination, it promotes shame, which, subsequently, encourages withdrawal from social interaction. Directions for future research are also discussed.

Does multisensory stimulation with virtual reality (VR) and smell improve learning? An educational experience in recall and creativity

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to derive into practical recommendations from multisensory stimulation with virtual reality (VR) and scent to help educators develop effective teaching strategies geared toward aspects of the learning experience, recall, and creativity in a stereotypical learning context.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper is based on a randomized experiment in which student participants were subdivided into three treatment groups and one control group. Each group was stimulated by a different combination of visual, auditory, and olfactory stimuli (2D SMELL, VR, and VR SMELL) and the outcomes were compared against those of the control group (2D). Consistent with the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning, hypotheses were constructed to study the effect of different combinations of stimuli on the learning experience and learning outcomes related to recall and creativity in a stereotypical learning context.

Findings

Traditional video content alone and bundled with a coherent olfactory stimulus prompted higher self-reported ratings of perceived quality of the sensory experience. Olfactory stimulus in combination with either VR or a traditional video prompted higher self-reported ratings on perceived immersion. In a stereotypical learning context, the highest recall scores were achieved with traditional video alone. Both VR alone and bundled with an olfactory stimulus resulted in enhanced creativity.

Research limitations/implications

The findings of this study should be interpreted in the context of adopting multisensory stimulations combined with VR technology as part of stereotypical learning contexts. Most professional educators do not have robust knowledge or experience in using build-on-purpose multisensory stimuli but are increasingly engaged in using multisensory tools such as VR, as part of their teaching practice. In relation to recall, the results are consistent with the hypothesis that in a stereotypical learning context, a multisensory experience involving VR and olfactory stimuli can be related to an undesired cognitive load for learners. There exists a possibility that the low-technical version of the VR goggles used, as well as the contents of the instructional video may have influenced the learning outcomes in terms of recall. Hence, future research should consider such aspects and focus on richer learning contexts.

Originality/value

This work offers practical recommendations for instructional design strategies aiming to create multisensory stimulations with VR and olfactory components to foster a richer learning experience and enhanced learning outcomes, under the assumptions of a stereotypical learning context.

Pandemic elevates sensitivity to moral disgust but not pathogen disgust

The behavioral immune system, with disgust as its motivational part, serves as the first line of defense in organisms' protection against pathogens. Laboratory studies indicate that disgust sensitivity adaptively adjusts to simulated environmental threat, but whether disgust levels similarly change in response to real-life threats, such as a pandemic, remains largely unknown. In a preregistered within-subject study, we tested whether the threat posed by the Covid-19 pandemic would lead to increased perceived disgust. The perception of threat was induced by testing during two phases of the Covid-19 pandemic (periods of high vs. low pathogen threat). We found heightened levels of moral disgust during a "wave" of the pandemic, but the effect was not observed in the domain of pathogen or sexual disgust. Moreover, the age of respondents and levels of trait anxiety were positively associated with pathogen and moral disgust, suggesting that variation in disgust sensitivity may be based chiefly on stable characteristics.

The role of emotional awareness in evaluative judgment: evidence from alexithymia

Evaluative judgments imply positive or negative regard. But there are different ways in which something can be positive or negative. How do we tell them apart? According to Evaluative Sentimentalism, different evaluations (e.g., dangerousness vs. offensiveness) are grounded on different emotions (e.g., fear vs. anger). If this is the case, evaluation differentiation requires emotional awareness. Here, we test this hypothesis by looking at alexithymia, a deficit in emotional awareness consisting of problems identifying, describing, and thinking about emotions. The results of Study 1 suggest that high alexithymia is not only related to problems distinguishing emotions, but also to problems distinguishing evaluations. Study 2 replicated this latter effect after controlling for individual differences in attentional impulsiveness and reflective reasoning, and found that reasoning makes an independent contribution to evaluation differentiation. These results suggest that emotional sensibilities play an irreducible role in evaluative judgment while affording a role for reasoning.

Disgusting Democrats and Repulsive Republicans: Members of Political Outgroups Are Considered Physically Gross

The status of disgust as a sociomoral emotion is debated. We conducted a stringent test of whether social stimuli (specifically, political outgroup members) can elicit physical disgust, as distinct from moral or metaphorical disgust. We employed stimuli (male faces) matched on baseline disgustingness, provided other ways for participants to express negativity toward outgroup members, and used concrete self-report measures of disgust, as well as a nonverbal measure (participants' facial expressions). Across three preregistered studies (total N = 915), we found that political outgroup members are judged to be "disgusting," although this effect is generally weaker for concrete self-report measures and absent for the nonverbal measure. This suggests that social stimuli are capable of eliciting genuine physical disgust, although it is not always outwardly expressed, and the strength of this result depends on the measures employed. We discuss implications of these results for research on sociomoral emotions and American politics.

Defensive emotions and evaluative judgements: Sensitivity to anger and fear predicts moral judgements, whereas sensitivity to disgust predicts aesthetic judgements

Aesthetic and moral evaluations engage appetitive and defensive emotions. While the role played by pleasure in positive aesthetic and moral judgements has been extensively researched, little is known about how defensive emotions influence negative aesthetic and moral judgements. Specifically, it is unknown which defensive emotions such judgements tap into, and whether both kinds of judgement share a common emotional root. Here, we investigated how participants' individual sensitivity to disgust, fear, anger and sadness predicted subjective judgements of aesthetic and moral stimuli. Bayesian modelling revealed that participants who were more sensitive to anger and fear found conventional and moral transgressions more wrong. In contrast, participants who were more sensitive to disgust disliked asymmetrical geometric patterns and untidy rooms more. These findings suggest that aesthetic and moral evaluations engage multiple defensive emotions, not just disgust, and that they may rely on different defensive emotions as part of their computational mechanism.

Awe promotes moral expansiveness via the small-self

The experience of awe has been shown to challenge how people think about themselves and the world around them, linking them to something greater than themselves. We investigated whether this emotional experience of awe may also challenge the boundaries of our moral consideration, leading to a generalized expansion in our moral worlds. Across five studies (N = 990), we examined whether awe might promote moral expansiveness; that is, increased moral concern across a broad range of entities (e.g., out-groups, animals, plants, environments). Cross-sectional Studies 1a and 1b, found dispositional awe was related to greater moral expansiveness. Experimental Studies 2 and 3, using video-induced awe, found consistent indirect effects on moral expansiveness, via self-reported awe and the small-self sense of vastness. Experimental Study 4, using Virtual Reality induced awe, found those in the awe condition (vs. control) reported greater moral expansiveness, and this was fully mediated by the small-self sense of vastness. Our findings show awe expands our sense of connectedness to the broader world, and through this, increases the breath of our moral concern.

Assessing the factors that influence the donation of a deceased family member's organs in an opt-out system for organ donation

RATIONALE

Family, and sometimes longstanding friends, have considerable influence over organ donation, through agreeing or disagreeing to the donation of a deceased individual's organs. To date, most research has been undertaken within opt-in systems.

OBJECTIVE

This study advances on previous research by assessing next-of-kin approval under opt-out legislation. We tested whether next-of-kin approval varies when the deceased is a registered donor (opted-in), registered non-donor (opted-out) or has not registered a decision under an opt-out policy (deemed consent). We also tested if the deceased's wishes influenced next-of-kin approval through relatives anticipating regret for not donating and feelings of uncertainty. Finally, we assessed whether next-of-kin's own beliefs about organ donation influenced whether they followed the deceased's wishes.

METHODS

Participants (N = 848) living in a country with opt-out legislation (Wales, UK) were asked to imagine a relative had died under an opt-out system and decided if their relatives' organs should be donated. Participants were randomly allocated to imagine the deceased had either (i) opted-in, (ii) opted-out or (iii) not registered a decision (deemed consent). The outcome variable was next-of-kin approval, with uncertainty and anticipated regret as potential mediators and next-of-kin's beliefs about organ donation as moderators.

RESULTS

Next-of-kin approval was lower when the deceased had opted-out than under deemed consent. This was due to next-of-kin anticipating more regret for not donating under deemed consent than opt-out. Further analyses revealed the deceased's wishes influence next-of-kin approval, via anticipated regret, when next-of-kin did not hold negative beliefs about organ donation.

CONCLUSIONS

The deceased's wishes were less likely to be followed when next-of-kin had negative beliefs towards donation. Developing large-scale campaigns to improve these beliefs in the general public should make people more likely to follow the deceased's wishes. As a result, these campaigns should improve the availability of donor organs.

Opposite effects of estradiol and progesterone on woman's disgust processing

Background

Ovarian hormones play a critical role in emotion processing, which may be a major reason for the high rates of major depressive disorders in women. However, the exact roles of estradiol and progesterone in emotional processing remain unclear. To this end, we performed behavioral and rs-fMRI studies on the effects ovarian hormones on disgust emotion.

Methods

In Experiment 1, 95 Chinese female undergraduates completed the single category implicit association test (SC-IAT) and explicit measures of disgust intensity task, 32 in the menstrual phase, 30 in the follicular phase, and 33 in the luteal phase. In Experiment 2, A total of 25 healthy female undergraduates completed three sessions of the rs-fMRI. The menstrual group was scanned during cycle days 2-5, the follicular group during cycle during days 10-13, and the luteal group was scanned 3-7 days before the next menstruation.

Results

The behavioral results showed that women during the luteal phase had higher D scores and shorter response times (RTs) to disgust stimuli compared to the menses and follicular phases. In contrast, women during the follicular phase had fewer feelings of disgust and longer RTs to pathogen stimuli compared with that during the menses and luteal phases, but this effect was moderated by the intensity of the stimuli. rs-fMRI studies showed that women during the luteal phase have higher functional connectivity in the salience network than those in the follicular phase. Compared with the menstrual phase, women have lower functional connectivity in the amygdala during the follicular phase.

Conclusion

In summary, a more negative attitude to disgust stimuli and the enhanced functional connectivity of the salience network during the luteal phase may be associated with high progesterone levels, whereas lower disgust feelings and reduced functional connectivity of the amygdala during the follicular phase may be associated with high estradiol levels.

Specificity Versus Generality: A Meta-Analytic Review Of The Association Between Trait Disgust Sensitivity And Moral Judgment

Disgust seems to play an important role in moral judgment. However, it is unclear whether the role of disgust in moral judgment is limited to certain kinds of moral domains (versus many) and/or certain types of disgust (versus many). To clarify these questions, we conducted a multilevel meta-analysis ( k = 512; N = 72,443) on relations between trait disgust sensitivity and moral judgment (disgust-immorality association). Main analyses revealed a significant overall mean disgust-immorality association ( r = .23). Additionally, moderator analyses revealed significant specificity in disgust type and moral domain (grounded in Moral Foundations Theory): effects were stronger for (a) sexual disgust compared to pathogen disgust, (b) sanctity moral judgments compared to other domains of moral judgments, and (c) sexual-sanctity associations compared to other disgust type-moral domain pairings.

Do we enjoy what we sense and perceive? A dissociation between aesthetic appreciation and basic perception of environmental objects or events

This integrative review rearticulates the notion of human aesthetics by critically appraising the conventional definitions, offerring a new, more comprehensive definition, and identifying the fundamental components associated with it. It intends to advance holistic understanding of the notion by differentiating aesthetic perception from basic perceptual recognition, and by characterizing these concepts from the perspective of information processing in both visual and nonvisual modalities. To this end, we analyze the dissociative nature of information processing in the brain, introducing a novel local-global integrative model that differentiates aesthetic processing from basic perceptual processing. This model builds on the current state of the art in visual aesthetics as well as newer propositions about nonvisual aesthetics. This model comprises two analytic channels: aesthetics-only channel and perception-to-aesthetics channel. The aesthetics-only channel primarily involves restricted local processing for quality or richness (e.g., attractiveness, beauty/prettiness, elegance, sublimeness, catchiness, hedonic value) analysis, whereas the perception-to-aesthetics channel involves global/extended local processing for basic feature analysis, followed by restricted local processing for quality or richness analysis. We contend that aesthetic processing operates independently of basic perceptual processing, but not independently of cognitive processing. We further conjecture that there might be a common faculty, labeled as aesthetic cognition faculty, in the human brain for all sensory aesthetics albeit other parts of the brain can also be activated because of basic sensory processing prior to aesthetic processing, particularly during the operation of the second channel. This generalized model can account not only for simple and pure aesthetic experiences but for partial and complex aesthetic experiences as well.

A Dual-Process Approach to Moral Panic and Public Support for Sex Offender Management Policies

The current study explores if and how dual-process thinking styles (System I/experiential and System II/rational processing) predict and explain the degree to which members of the public express moral panic toward and support for existing sex offender management policies (registration, notification, residence restrictions), regardless of their efficacy or effects on recidivism rates, for different types of individuals who commit sex offenses (sex offender, juvenile sex offender, cybersex offender, female sex offender, rapist, child molester). Online experimental methods were used with a lay sample (N = 324). Results show that the extent to which participants exhibited a reliance on System I processing significantly predicted their feelings of moral panic (concern, hostility, and volatility) toward individuals classified as child molesters. Further, feelings of concern, hostility, and volatility, as significant predictors of support for existing sex offender management policies for individuals classified as child molesters, were found to increase as a function of participants' reliance on the System I, experiential thinking style. Implications of this work, specifically related to addressing public support for existing sex offender management policies for individuals classified as child molesters, are discussed.

A tale of two cities: emotion and reason in the formation of moral judgement and possible metaethical implications

The project of naturalizing ethics has multiple contributions, from cognitive and moral psychology to primatology, neuroscience or evolutionary theory. One of the strategies for naturalizing ethics has been to argue that moral norms and values can be explained away if we focus on their causal history, if it is possible to offer both an ultimate and proximate causal explanation for them. In this article, I will focus on the contribution of cognitive and moral psychology as a way of offering a proximate causal explanation for moral judgments. I am mostly interested in understanding to what extent these cognitive and psychological questions have some bearing in the fields of ethics and meta-ethics. Does this research programme put at stake the contention that ethics is a manifestation of human rationality? Is it true that finding the cognitive underpinnings of some of our moral judgments vindicates some meta-ethical position, namely some kind of reductionist naturalism? In the end, I will argue that even if scientific disciplines such as cognitive psychology give us a naturalized picture of the moral agent, there seem to be no reasons to think that from a naturalized perspective of the agent capable of perceiving value it must follow the naturalization of value itself.

How Stable are Moral Judgments?

Psychologists and philosophers often work hand in hand to investigate many aspects of moral cognition. In this paper, we want to highlight one aspect that to date has been relatively neglected: the stability of moral judgment over time. After explaining why philosophers and psychologists should consider stability and then surveying previous research, we will present the results of an original three-wave longitudinal study. We asked participants to make judgments about the same acts in a series of sacrificial dilemmas three times, 6-8 days apart. In addition to investigating the stability of our participants' ratings over time, we also explored some potential explanations for instability. To end, we will discuss these and other potential psychological sources of moral stability (or instability) and highlight possible philosophical implications of our findings.

Effects of Core Disgust and Moral Disgust on Moral Judgment: An Event-Related Potential Study

Core disgust is elicited by physical or chemical stimuli, while moral disgust is evoked by abstract violations of moral norms. Although previous studies have pointed out these two types of disgust can affect behavior and spatial dimensions of moral judgment, less is known about how moral and core disgust affect the temporal neural processing of moral judgment. In addition, whether moral and core disgust are only related to purity-based moral judgment or all kinds of moral judgment is still controversial. This study aimed to explore how core and moral disgust affect the neural processing of purity-based moral judgment by using affective priming and moral judgment tasks. The behavioral results showed that the severity of moral violation of non-purity ones is higher than purity ones. The event-related potentials (ERP) results mainly revealed that earlier P2 and N2 components, which represent the automatic moral processes, can differentiate neutral and two types of disgust rather than differentiating moral domain, while the later N450, frontal, and parietal LPP components, which represent the conflict detection and, later, cognitive processing can differentiate the purity and non-purity ones rather than differentiating priming type. Moreover, core and moral disgust priming mainly differed in the purity-based moral processing indexed by parietal LPP. Our findings confirmed that the disgusting effect on moral judgments can be explained within the framework of dual-process and social intuitionist models, suggesting that emotions, including core and moral disgust, played an essential role in the automatic intuition process. The later parietal LPP results strongly supported that core disgust only affected the purity-based moral judgment, fitting the primary purity hypothesis well. We show how these theories can provide novel insights into the temporal mechanisms of moral judgment.

Serial reproduction of narratives preserves emotional appraisals

We conducted the largest multiple-iteration retelling study to date (12,840 participants and 19,086 retellings) with two different studies that test how emotional appraisals are transmitted across retellings. We use a novel Bayesian model that tracks changes across retellings. Study 1 examines the preservation of appraisals of happy and sad stories and finds that retellings preserve the story's degree of happiness and sadness even when length shrinks and aspects of story coherence and rationalisation deteriorate. Study 2 compared the transmission of appraisals of happiness and sadness with embarrassment, disgust, and risk. Appraisals of happiness, sadness, and also embarrassment showed high appraisal preservation, while disgust and risk were not well preserved. We conclude that participants in our studies encoded happy and sad stories by encapsulating the events and details into an overall emotional appraisal of the story and that this processing strategy might also apply to stories involving other emotions like embarrassment. The emotional appraisal played a key role in retelling by helping to guide the selection, invention, and ordering of the story elements. Hence, we posit that emotion appraisals can operate as anchors for remembering and retelling stories, thus playing an important role in narrative communication.

Why must we rush to bury our dead (pigs): The option of excarnation by exposure

The accepted paradigm of foreign animal disease preparedness in Canada, the emergency for which to prepare, starts with identification of the exotic viral agent in a Canadian farm animal population. This narrative focuses on the containment of the infectious agent, within diseased animals, on infected premises. Framing the emergency as a disease incursion limits rational imagination to only one version of one potential animal emergency. This framing of the problem directs the carcass disposal solutions to consider only methods to dispose of viral infected material. However, in all documented responses to catastrophic swine diseases in the past three decades, the number of uninfected animals caught up in movement control zones and killed greatly exceeds the number of infected animals killed. The temporary closures of slaughterhouses in spring 2020 due to COVID-19 transmission resulted in thousands of healthy market hogs surplus to market; an unanticipated emergency of healthy pigs. This paper proposes an alternate carcass disposal option for material from uninfected farms. "Excarnation by exposure" is a natural process of debulking and dehydrating carcasses by blow fly larvae, mitigating financial costs of final disposal. Excarnation by exposure is a reasonable and possibly necessary additional option for the management of uninfected carcasses in a catastrophic emergency response in commercial pigs.

Omission bias in children's and adults' moral judgments of lies

This study examined whether omission bias occurs in moral judgments of lies. Omission bias is the tendency to judge acts of commission as morally worse than equivalent acts of omission. Children aged 8 and 9 years (third graders) and 11 and 12 years (sixth graders), as well as adults, made moral judgments about lies of commission and omission to conceal transgressions. Descriptions of four scenarios varied in terms of whether the protagonists lied to benefit themselves or others and whether the transgression was deliberate or accidental. The results showed that both age groups of children, as well as adults, judged that lies of commission were morally worse than lies of omission in all four scenarios, indicating that omission bias clearly occurs in moral judgments of lies. However, there were age differences in the magnitude of omission bias. Third and sixth graders generally showed omission bias of the same magnitude for all scenarios, whereas omission bias in adults was stronger for the scenarios that benefited self rather than others and for scenarios in which deliberate transgressions, rather than accidental ones, were concealed. These results reveal differences in moral judgments of lies between middle childhood and adulthood.

Exploring Clinical Practice and Developing Clinician Self-Reflection Through Cross Self-Confrontation Methodology: An Application Within an Addiction Medicine Unit

Use of the methodology of cross self-confrontation (CSC) is limited in the field of healthcare and in the context of clinical practice. We applied this methodology within an addiction medicine unit of a university hospital, as part of an exploration of addiction-related clinical difficulties. Cross self-confrontation was used according to a 3-phase design based on video recorded clinical interviews with pairs of nurses and medical doctors. The article reports and discusses the application of CSC in a specific clinical context and illustrates the methodological process through one result. Findings suggest two major strengths of CSC in the context of clinical practice research and education: (1) the capacity to elicit tacit knowledge from daily clinical practice and (2) the ability to enhance self-reflection by questioning professionals both individually and collectively. Further use of CSC in nursing surroundings and clinical settings should be encouraged.

Impaired Perception of Unintentional Transgression of Social Norms after Prefrontal Cortex Damage: Relationship to Decision Making, Emotion Recognition, and Executive Functions

OBJECTIVE

Patients with prefrontal cortex damage often transgress social rules and show lower accuracy in identifying and explaining inappropriate social behavior. The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between the ability to perceive other unintentional transgressions of social norms and both decision making and emotion recognition as these abilities are critical for appropriate social behavior.

METHOD

We examined a group of patients with focal prefrontal cortex damage (N = 28) and a group of matched control participants (N = 28) for their abilities to detect unintentional transgression of social norms using the "Faux-Pas" task of theory of mind, to make advantageous decisions on the Iowa gambling task, and to recognize basic emotions on the Ekman facial affect test.

RESULTS

The group of patients with frontal lobe damage was impaired in all of these tasks compared with control participants. Moreover, all the "Faux-Pas", Iowa gambling, and emotion recognition tasks were significantly associated and predicted by executive measures of inhibition, flexibility, or planning. However, only measures from the Iowa gambling task were associated and predicted performance on the "Faux-Pas" task. These tasks were not associated with performance in recognition of basic emotions. These findings suggest that theory of mind, executive functions, and decision-making abilities act in an interdependent way for appropriate social behavior. However, theory of mind and emotion recognition seem to have distinct but additive effects upon social behavior. Results from VLSM analysis also corroborate these data by showing a partially overlapped prefrontal circuitry underlying these cognitive domains.

Spacious Environments Make Us Tolerant-The Role of Emotion and Metaphor

The physical environment plays an important role in moral cognition. Previous research has demonstrated that the physical environment affects individual moral judgment. Investigators have argued that the environment influences moral judgment through emotion and cognition, such as during metaphor processing. Following the intensification of urbanization and increases in population size, the phenomenon of a narrow environment has become more common. However, the relation between environmental spaciousness and moral judgment has not been thoroughly examined. We examined the effect of environmental spaciousness (spaciousness vs. narrowness) on moral judgments in Experiment 1 and Experiment 2. Results showed that participants report a higher rating score of moral judgment in more spacious environments compared with narrow environments. We further explored the roles of emotion and metaphor in the relation between environmental spaciousness and moral judgments. We found support for a partial mediation effect of emotion in the relationship between environmental spaciousness and moral judgment. The results also supported an association between the concept of spaciousness and tolerant cognition. Spacious environments may elicit positive emotions and more tolerant cognition, which in turn influences moral judgment. These results provide new evidence for the influence of the environment on moral judgments, and more attention may be warranted to incorporate this relationship in environmental design.

Moral metaphorical effect of cleanliness on immoral workplace behaviors

Cleanliness connotes cleanness, hygiene, and beauty. Physical cleanliness is also a metaphor for moral purity, as proposed in recent literature. However, cleanliness means not only physical cleanliness but also environmental cleanliness. The article proposes that environmental cleanliness and physical self-cleanliness may metaphorically influence immoral behaviors in the workplace, and their effects may be different. The current study conducted a 2 (environmental cleanliness: clean vs. dirty) × 3 (self-cleanliness: hands-cleansing vs. face-cleansing vs. non-cleansing) between-subjects field experiment with employees as participants in a Chinese enterprise. One-hundred-seventy-seven employees volunteered to participate in the experiment. It was found that a clean workplace, rather than physical self-cleansing, renders harsh moral judgment regarding immoral workplace behaviors. The participants were less willing to accept immoral workplace behaviors in a clean environment than in a dirty environment, while self-cleanliness (hands-cleansing or face-cleansing vs. non-cleansing) had no significant influence on employees’ moral judgments of immoral workplace behaviors. In addition, the significant effects of environmental cleanliness were found in all the ten dimensions of immoral workplace behaviors. The findings reveal the metaphorical association between environmental cleanliness and the concept of higher social moral norms, and confirm that environmental cleanliness is a key factor leading to moral metaphorical effects. This result provides unique insight to the social significance of environmental cleanliness, and has important implications to prevent immoral workplace behaviors. A theoretical framework is proposed to explain why environmental cleanliness is more likely to affect moral judgment involving organizational interests than self-cleanliness. Considering most previous research has been done with samples of college students, this study is especially valuable through a field experiment on actual employees.

The scent of attraction and the smell of success: crossmodal influences on person perception

In recent decades, there has been an explosion of research into the crossmodal influence of olfactory cues on multisensory person perception. Numerous peer-reviewed studies have documented that a variety of olfactory stimuli, from ambient malodours through to fine fragrances, and even a range of chemosensory body odours can influence everything from a perceiver's judgments of another person's attractiveness, age, affect, health/disease status, and even elements of their personality. The crossmodal and multisensory contributions to such effects are reviewed and the limitations/peculiarities of the research that have been published to date are highlighted. At the same time, however, it is important to note that the presence of scent (and/or the absence of malodour) can also influence people's (i.e., a perceiver's) self-confidence which may, in turn, affect how attractive they appear to others. Several potential cognitive mechanisms have been put forward to try and explain such crossmodal/multisensory influences, and some of the neural substrates underpinning these effects have now been characterized. At the end of this narrative review, a number of the potential (and actual) applications for, and implications of, such crossmodal/multisensory phenomena involving olfaction are outlined briefly.

Deontological and Altruistic Guilt Feelings: A Dualistic Thesis

In this paper we argue in favor of the existence of two different guilt feelings: altruistic guilt (AG) and deontological guilt (DG). AG arises from having harmed, through one's own action or omission, an innocent victim, while DG arises from the transgression of an internalized norm. In most daily experiences of guilt feelings both types are present, but we argue that they are not traceable to each other and that each can be present without the other. We show that the two guilt feelings can be distinguished with reference to behavioral, cognitive, and neurophysiological aspects. Moreover, we demonstrate that they are differently related to other processes and emotions. AG is connected with pain, empathy and ToM. DG is strongly related to disgust. We briefly illustrate some implications for moral psychology and clinical psychology.

The experience of disgust by nursing and midwifery students: An interpretative phenomenological approach study

Although disgust is recognized as a common and prominent emotion in healthcare, little is known about how healthcare professionals understand, experience and conceptualize disgust. The aim of the study was to gain an in-depth understanding of how nursing and midwifery students experience, understand and cope with disgust in their clinical work. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Six participants (all women: two nursing students, four midwifery students) from a university in the South of England were interviewed. Four superordinate themes with eight subthemes were identified. Overall, findings suggest that participants experience both moral and physical disgust; however, they find it difficult to talk about and use other terms to describe their experience. Findings are discussed through the lens of social identity theory, to understand the relevance of professional identity and how this might further maintain the disgust taboo. The strategies participants have developed in order to cope with disgust are explored and understood within the current healthcare climate. Future research should focus on ways of addressing the experience of disgust by healthcare professionals in order to improve the quality of care provided, especially in the climate of the COVID-19 crisis.

Environmental Aesthetic Value Influences the Intention for Moral Behavior: Changes in Behavioral Moral Judgment

The environment affects moral behavior. Previous research found that a beautiful environment leads to pro-social behavior, which is related to behavioral intention. However, the effect of environmental aesthetic value on immoral and moral behavior remains unclear. Therefore, in the present study, we explored the effect of environmental aesthetic value on behavioral intention and its possible mechanisms. We conducted four experiments. Experiment 1 adopted the priming paradigm and IAT paradigm to explore the relationship between environmental aesthetic value and behavioral intention. It used photographs of the environment as priming stimuli and scene drawings of behavior as target stimuli. The results showed that participants had a higher intention to engage in moral behavior in an environment with a high aesthetic value, and a lower intention to engage in immoral behavior, compared to in an environment with a low aesthetic value. Similarly, an environment with a low aesthetic value was related to immoral behavior. Experiment 2 further explored the possible mechanism for the above results: changes in moral judgment. The results showed that moral judgment in different environments may lead to different behavioral intentions. The current study extends prior research by demonstrating the effect of environmental aesthetic value on behavioral intention and moral judgment, and good knowledge about the relationship between environmental aesthetic value and moral behavior. In addition, it provides a new hypothesis for the relationship between environment and behavior according to the results of the environment-behavior matching hypothesis, which can provide a new perspective on moral education.

Predicting Regional Variations in Nationalism With Online Expression of Disgust in China

Disgust is one of the basic emotions and is part of the behavioral immune system, which evolutionarily protects humans from toxic substances as well as from contamination threats by outgroup members. Previous works reveal that disgust not only activates humans’ defense against potential individual and collective threats, but also leads to severe moral judgments, negative intergroup attitudes, and even conservative political orientations. As is already known, nationalism is an ideology that features both negative feelings toward outgroups and beliefs about native superiority or privileges. Evidence from previous studies suggests that disgust is related to nationalism’s several components but lacks direct research on nationalism and disgust. The current study examines the relationship between disgust and nationalism in China at both individual and regional levels. In study 1, participants temporally induced disgust (vs. control) increasing the adoption of nationalism. In Study 2, we analyzed covariation in disgust expression in the Chinese micro-blog Weibo and the nationalism index as part of an online large-scale political survey http://zuobiao.me/ at the province level across Mainland China. The results show that online expression of disgust positively predicts nationalistic orientation at the regional level. Finally, we discuss how the findings shed light on research concerning online emotion expression and potential future directions.

Interventions to reduce meat consumption by appealing to animal welfare: Meta-analysis and evidence-based recommendations

Reducing meat consumption may improve human health, curb environmental damage, and limit the large-scale suffering of animals raised in factory farms. Most attention to reducing consumption has focused on restructuring environments where foods are chosen or on making health or environmental appeals. However, psychological theory suggests that interventions appealing to animal welfare concerns might operate on distinct, potent pathways. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis evaluating the effectiveness of these interventions. We searched eight academic databases and extensively searched grey literature. We meta-analyzed 100 studies assessing interventions designed to reduce meat consumption or purchase by mentioning or portraying farm animals, that measured behavioral or self-reported outcomes related to meat consumption, purchase, or related intentions, and that had a control condition. The interventions consistently reduced meat consumption, purchase, or related intentions at least in the short term with meaningfully large effects (meta-analytic mean risk ratio [RR] = 1.22; 95% CI: [1.13, 1.33]). We estimated that a large majority of population effect sizes (71%; 95% CI: [59%, 80%]) were stronger than RR = 1.1 and that few were in the unintended direction. Via meta-regression, we identified some specific characteristics of studies and interventions that were associated with effect size. Risk-of-bias assessments identified both methodological strengths and limitations of this literature; however, results did not differ meaningfully in sensitivity analyses retaining only studies at the lowest risk of bias. Evidence of publication bias was not apparent. In conclusion, animal welfare interventions preliminarily appear effective in these typically short-term studies of primarily self-reported outcomes. Future research should use direct behavioral outcomes that minimize the potential for social desirability bias and are measured over long-term follow-up.

Contamination fear in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic: A moderated mediation quasi-experimental model of the effect of disgust on outgroup bias towards diaspora

Disgust sensitivity plays a key role in generating and maintaining outgroup biases. To test our hypotheses, we used a quasi-experimental between-subjects design, in which participants were randomly assigned to a disgust induction condition (N = 102) or a non-induction neutral group (N = 92). The induction scenario featured the return of the diaspora to their home country due to COVID-19 concerns. In one scenario, the diaspora lied about the country they arrived from, and in the other, there was no moral transgression. We hypothesized that the effect of disgust sensitivity on dehumanization and aggressive tendencies passed through contamination fear and the moderated mediation model indicated that this indirect effect was stronger for participants in the disgust-induction than in the non-induction group. This effect was found for biological dehumanization and passive aggression outcomes, both related to outgroup bias. Consistent with the role of disgust as a disease-avoidance mechanism, our results suggest that disgust could facilitate stronger outgroup bias in the context of a high health threat, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

Disease and Disapproval: COVID-19 Concern is Related to Greater Moral Condemnation

Prior research has indicated that disease threat and disgust are associated with harsher moral condemnation. We investigated the role of a specific, highly salient health concern, namely the spread of the coronavirus, and associated COVID-19 disease, on moral disapproval. We hypothesized that individuals who report greater subjective worry about COVID-19 would be more sensitive to moral transgressions. Across three studies (N = 913), conducted March-May 2020 as the pandemic started to unfold in the United States, we found that individuals who were worried about contracting the infectious disease made harsher moral judgments than those who were relatively less worried. This effect was not restricted to transgressions involving purity, but extended to transgressions involving harm, fairness, authority, and loyalty, and remained when controlling for political orientation. Furthermore, for Studies 1 and 2 the effect also was robust when taking into account the contamination subscale of the Disgust Scale-Revised. These findings add to the growing literature that concrete threats to health can play a role in abstract moral considerations, supporting the notion that judgments of wrongdoing are not based on rational thought alone.

Disgust Sensitivity Among Women During the COVID-19 Outbreak

The emotion of disgust is suggested to be an adaptation that evolved to keep us away from sources of infection. Therefore, individuals from populations with greater pathogen stress should have a greater disgust sensitivity. However, current evidence for a positive relationship between disgust sensitivity and the intensity of infectious diseases in the environment is limited. We tested whether disgust and contamination sensitivity changed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Disgust was assessed in 984 women in 2017 (before pandemic) and 633 women in 2020 (during pandemic) by a set of photographs depicting sources of infection and Pathogen and Moral of Three-Domain Disgust Scale. Further, contamination sensitivity among participants in two waves was measured by Contamination Obsessions and Washing Compulsions Subscale of Padua Inventory. State anxiety was measured with the Polish adaptation of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) only during the second wave of data collection. Women from the COVID-19 pandemic group assessed the photographs depicting sources of infection as more disgusting, scoring higher on Padua Inventory, but lower on Moral Disgust Domain as compared to women from before the pandemic. In addition, anxiety levels during pandemic positively correlated with scores from Pathogen Disgust Domain, Padua Inventory, and the ratings of the photographs. The participants of the study scored higher in state anxiety than the norms determined for the Polish population. Summarizing, we present evidence for differences in individual levels of disgust sensitivity in relation to pathogen stress, supporting the idea that disgust evolved to serve as protection from pathogens.