Justin F. Landy

Does Incidental Disgust Amplify Moral Judgment? A Meta-Analytic Review of Experimental Evidence.

The role of emotion in moral judgment is currently a topic of much debate in moral psychology. One specific claim made by many researchers is that irrelevant feelings of disgust can amplify the severity of moral condemnation. Numerous researchers have found this effect, but there have also been several published failures to replicate it. Clarifying this issue would inform important theoretical debates among rival accounts of moral judgment. We meta-analyzed all available studies—published and unpublished—in which incidental disgust was manipulated prior to or concurrent with a moral judgment task (k = 50). We found evidence for a small amplification effect of disgust (d = 0.11), which is strongest for gustatory/olfactory modes of disgust induction. However, there is also some suggestion of publication bias in this literature, and when this is accounted for, the effect disappears entirely (d = −0.01). Moreover, prevalent confounds mean that the effect size that we estimate is best interpreted as an upper bound on the size of the amplification effect. On the basis of the results of this meta-analysis, we argue against strong claims about the causal role of affect in moral judgment and suggest a need for new, more rigorous research on this topic.

When It’s Bad to Be Friendly and Smart The Desirability of Sociability and Competence Depends on Morality

Morality, sociability, and competence are distinct dimensions in person perception. We argue that a person’s morality informs us about their likely intentions, whereas their competence and sociability inform us about the likelihood that they will fulfill those intentions. Accordingly, we hypothesized that whereas morality would be considered unconditionally positive, sociability and competence would be highly positive only in moral others, and would be less positive in immoral others. Using exploratory factor analyses, Studies 1a and 1b distinguished evaluations of morality and sociability. Studies 2 to 5 then showed that sociability and competence are evaluated positively contingent on morality—Study 2 demonstrated this phenomenon, while the remaining studies explained it (Study 3), generalized it (Studies 3-5), and ruled out an alternative explanation for it (Study 5). Study 6 showed that the positivity of morality traits is independent of other morality traits. These results support a functionalist account of these dimensions of person perception.

Valuing Different Human Lives

Do people think of the value of all human lives as equivalent irrespective of age? Affirmations of the equal value of all human lives are culturally prominent, yet much evidence points to the fact that the young are often prioritized over the old in life-and-death decision-making contexts. Studies 1-3 aimed to reconcile this tension by showing that although individuals are seen as more equal with respect to negative rights not to be harmed or killed (though not completely equal), they are seen as less equal with respect to positive rights to be aided or saved. Age exerts a large and systematic impact on decisions about who to save and about whose death is more tragic, suggesting that individuals are seen as possessing differing amounts of contingent value. These initial studies also yielded the novel finding that, although children are prioritized over adults, older children are often prioritized over younger children. Study 4 replicated this finding with a think-aloud methodology; the study showed that the preference for older children appears to be driven by their having had more invested in their lives, their better developed social relations, and their greater understanding of death. Studies 5a-5c demonstrated the independent causal effects of each of these variables on judgments of lifes value. Finally, in Studies 6 and 7, mediation methods were used to show that older childrens more meaningful social relations primarily explain the greater value of older than of younger children. These findings have implications for bioethics and medical policy.

Show Me the Money: A Systematic Exploration of Manipulations, Moderators, and Mechanisms of Priming Effects

A major challenge for accumulating knowledge in psychology is the variation in methods and participant populations across studies in a single domain. We offer a systematic approach to addressing this challenge and implement it in the domain of money priming. In three preregistered experiments (N = 4,649), participants were exposed to one of a number of money manipulations before completing self-report measures of money activation (Study 1); engaging in a behavioral-persistence task (Study 3); completing self-report measures of subjective wealth, self-sufficiency, and communion-agency (Studies 1–3); and completing demographic questions (Studies 1–3). Four of the five manipulations we tested activated the concept of money, but, contrary to what we expected based on the preponderance of the published literature, no manipulation consistently affected any dependent measure. Moderation by sociodemographic characteristics was sparse and inconsistent across studies. We discuss implications for theories of money priming and explain how our approach can complement recent efforts to build a reproducible, cumulative psychological science.

Morality traits still dominate in forming impressions of others

Melnikoff and Bailey (MB a dishonest spy is liked more than an honest spy when working for the CIA against ISIS, but not when working for ISIS (experiment 2); romantically unattached men implicitly like an infidelitous woman as much as a faithful woman (experiment 3); and individuals who have acted selfishly in a dictator game like an altruistic partner who … [↵][1]1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: justinlandy{at}chicagobooth.edu. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1

Re-evaluating moral disgust: Sensitivity to many affective states predicts extremity in many evaluative judgments

Disgust-sensitive individuals are particularly morally critical. Some theorists take this as evidence that disgust has a uniquely moral form: disgust contributes to moralization even of pathogen-free violations, and disgust’s contribution to moralization is unique from other emotional states. We argue that the relationship between disgust sensitivity (DS) and moral judgment is not special in two respects. First, trait sensitivity to many other affective states, beyond disgust, predicts moral evaluations. Second, DS also predicts nonnormative evaluative judgments. Four studies supported these hypotheses, using multiple measures of DS, and judgments of moral violations (Studies 1 and 4), conventional violations (Study 1), imprudent actions (Study 1), competence (Study 2), and aesthetic evaluations (Study 3). Our findings call into question the usefulness of “moral disgust” as a psychological construct by showing that the relationship between DS and moral condemnation is one instantiation of a more general association between affect and judgment.

Our Conclusions Were Tentative, But Appropriate: A Reply to Schnall et al. (2015).

In our original meta-analysis (Landy & Goodwin, 2015, this issue), we demonstrated that the amplification effect of incidental disgust on moral condemnation is very small at best, d = .11, and may not exist at all—the effect disappears entirely when publication bias is accounted for, and existing studies may overestimate the true effect size owing to prevalent confounds. In their reply, Schnall, Haidt, Clore, and Jordan (2015, this issue) expressed surprise at the nature of our conclusions and argued that our meta-analysis supported most of what they demonstrated in 2008. They have taken issue with three aspects of our meta-analysis: that we did not include personality variables as moderators, that we minimized the importance of the relatively large effect of incidental gustatory/ olfactory disgust on moral judgment, and that we included studies in which participants may have been able to correctly attribute their disgust to its true source. We directly addressed the first concern in our original article, but we reiterate and expand upon that response here and reply to the second and third concerns. First, Schnall, Haidt, Clore, and Jordan (2015) were particularly concerned with our failure to include personality variables, such as private body consciousness (PBC), as moderators. As we pointed out in the original article, we did not include such variables as moderators because so few studies have included them that it would have been uninformative to meta-analyze them. In the case of PBC, only a handful of studies have included this individual difference measure (Baron, Royzman, & Goodwin, 2013; Cerban & Helweg-Larsen, 2010; Johnson, Cheung, & Donnellan, 2014; O’Connor & Helweg-Larsen, 2011; Schnall, Haidt, Clore, & Jordan, 2008). If more of the studies that we reviewed had included PBC, or anything else, then we would have included these variables in our meta-analysis. Schnall et al. extended this criticism by querying “why a meta-analysis was conducted on data for which essential variables had not even been assessed” (p. 537). In raising this query, Schnall et al. seem to be presenting social intuitionist theory as fundamentally including the assertion that the amplification effect is moderated by PBC, such that it only occurs for those high in PBC. Yet, this is not how the theory has typically been presented in the literature, including by Schnall et al. themselves. In their 2008 paper, Schnall et al. found that PBC moderated the amplification effect in three of their four studies, yet they framed their paper by claiming that “for most people, most of the time, most of the action [in determining moral judgments] is in the quick, automatic, affective evaluations they make of people and events” (p. 1097). And they concluded by asserting that the amplification effect occurs “most strongly” for people high in PBC (p. 1105), not that it does not occur at all for those low in PBC. Now, however, they seem to be saying something closer to “for some people, at least some of the action is in the quick, automatic, affective evaluations they make of people and events, but this is not the case for other people.” This strikes us as a quite different—and much weaker—claim than previous statements of the social intuitionist theory. This may prove to be an appropriate revision of the theory. But, it is not the theory that has so strongly shaped the existing literature. Our metaanalysis clarifies the state of the evidence regarding social intuitionism’s most fundamental theoretical claim. Schnall et al. noted that we did find a robust, relatively large amplification effect for studies using gustatory or olfactory disgust inductions, d = .37, and claimed that we minimized this finding. We did minimize this finding, but there is a good reason for doing so. This result cannot provide clear evidence for social intuitionism because confounding variables beyond disgust are particularly problematic for these types of inductions. Participants in these studies are typically exposed to noxious odors, or—in two studies—made to drink a disgusting, bitter liquid. In each case, the experimenter’s behavior is capable of provoking considerable offense, and even anger— in the first case, the experimenter has failed in his duty to keep the lab area clean and habitable, and in the latter, 590570 PPSXXX10.1177/1745691615590570Landy, GoodwinAppropriate Conclusions research-article2015

An Empirically-Derived Taxonomy of Moral Concepts

We propose that methods from the study of category-based induction can be used to test the descriptive accuracy of theories of moral judgment. We had participants rate the likelihood that a person would engage in a variety of actions, given information about a previous behavior. From these likelihood ratings, we extracted a hierarchical, taxonomic model of how moral violations relate to each other (Study 1). We then tested the descriptive adequacy of this model against an alternative model inspired by Moral Foundations Theory, using classic tasks from induction research (Studies 2a and 2b), and using a measure of confirmation, which accounts for the baseline frequency of these violations (Study 3). Lastly, we conducted focused tests of combinations of violations where the models make differing predictions (Study 4). This research provides new insight into how people represent moral concepts, connecting classic methods from cognitive science with contemporary themes in moral psychology.

What's Wrong with Using Steroids? Exploring Whether and Why People Oppose the Use of Performance Enhancing Drugs

The use of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) elicits widespread normative opposition, yet little research has investigated what underlies these judgments. We examine this question comprehensively, across 13 studies. We first test the hypothesis that opposition to PED use cannot be fully accounted for by considerations of fairness. We then test the influence of 10 other potential drivers of opposition in an exploratory manner. We find that health risks for the user and rules and laws prohibiting use of anabolic steroids reliably affect normative judgments. Next, we test whether these patterns generalize to a different PED—cognitive-enhancement drugs. Finally, we sketch a framework for understanding these results, borrowing from Social Domain Theory (e.g., Turiel, 1983). We argue that PED use exemplifies a class of violations with properties of moral, conventional, and prudential offenses. This research sheds light on a widespread, but understudied, normative judgment, and illustrates the utility of exploratory methods.