Abstract
Disgust is a natural defensive emotion that has evolved to protect against potential sources of contamination and has been recently linked to moral judgements in many studies. However, that people often report feelings of disgust when thinking about feces or moral transgressions alike does not necessarily mean that the same mechanisms mediate these reactions. The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (n = 22) to investigate whether core and moral disgusts entrain common neural systems. We provide evidence that: (i) activation of overlapping brain regions between core and moral disgust is the result of content overlap in the vignettes—core disgust elicitors—across conditions, and not from moral violations per se, and (ii) moral residue (i.e., the remaining or “residual” activation after the influence of core disgust elicitors have been taken into account) produced a pattern of activation that is more consistent with moral anger, than one of “residual disgust.” These findings run contrary to the premise that our “moral center” is connected to the area of the brain in which physical revulsion is located.
Highlights
The emotion of disgust is typically experienced as a feeling of revulsion elicited by something offensive—e.g., bodily fluids and waste, animal products, rotten food, and certain classes of sexual behavior, and is accompanied by a strong desire to withdraw from the eliciting stimulus (Rozin et al, 1984; Oaten et al, 2009)
It remains unclear whether the overlap of neural activation between core and moral disgust is limited to those moral transgressions, as noted above, by virtue of their reference to core disgust elicitors, or whether the presence of a moral transgression generates additional disgust, and greater activation, to that produced by a matched core disgust condition free of moral connotation— thereby establishing a “true” moral disgust
We suggest that a strong demonstration of moral disgust— one removed of any core disgust reference—would need six conditions: moral disgust vignettes, moral anger vignettes, matched disgust vignettes, high disgust vignettes, neutral control vignettes and scrambled vignettes
Summary
The emotion of disgust is typically experienced as a feeling of revulsion elicited by something offensive—e.g., bodily fluids and waste, animal products, rotten food, and certain classes of sexual behavior, and is accompanied by a strong desire to withdraw from the eliciting stimulus (Rozin et al, 1984; Oaten et al, 2009). Despite emerging consensus for the view that our “moral center” is connected to the area of the brain in which physical revulsion is mediated (Haidt, 2001; Schaich Borg et al, 2008; Schnall et al, 2008), we argue that the support for this premise is problematic It remains unclear whether the overlap of neural activation between core and moral disgust is limited to those moral transgressions, as noted above, by virtue of their reference to core disgust elicitors (e.g., feces, vomit, blood, and rotten meat), or whether the presence of a moral transgression generates additional disgust, and greater activation, to that produced by a matched core disgust condition free of moral connotation— thereby establishing a “true” moral disgust
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