Beyond Purity

Abstract

Previous studies support a link between moral disgust and impurity, whereas anger is linked to harm. We challenged these strict correspondences by showing that disgust is activated in response to information about moral character, even for harm violations. By contrast, anger is activated in response to information about actions, including their moral wrongness and consequences. Study 1 examined disgust and anger in response to an action that suggests bad moral character (animal cruelty) versus an action that is seen as inherently more wrong (domestic abuse). Animal cruelty was associated with more disgust than domestic abuse was, whereas domestic abuse was associated with more anger. Studies 2 and 3 manipulated character by varying the agent’s desire to cause harm and also varied the action’s harmful consequences. Desire to harm predicted only disgust (controlling for anger), whereas consequences were more closely related to anger (controlling for disgust). Taken together, these results indicate that disgust arises in response to evidence of bad moral character, not just to impurity.