Disgust sensitivity and moral judgments of purity: The role of transgression weirdness

Disgust sensitivity is more strongly related to moral judgments in the purity domain than to moral judgments in other moral domains. While this finding highlights the distinctiveness of moral domains, anti-modularity accounts suggest that the relationship is caused by the relative weirdness of purity transgressions and come to the conclusion that moral domains do not represent distinct mechanisms. In two studies (total N = 2,307), we test whether transgression weirdness accounts for disgust sensitivity’s stronger association with moral judgments of the purity as compared to other moral domains, but find little evidence for this claim. The relationship between disgust sensitivity and moral judgments of purity even remains when taking into account both (perceived) weirdness and (perceived) harmfulness of moral transgressions. These studies show that transgression weirdness and harmfulness cannot explain the disgust sensitivity–purity link, contradicting predictions following from popular anti-modularity accounts.

厌恶敏感性与纯洁领域中的道德判断相比，与其它道德领域的道德判断关系更为紧密。这一发现凸显了道德领域的独特性，而反模块化理论则认为这种关系是由纯洁违规行为的相对怪异性所导致的，并得出结论认为道德领域并不代表独立的机制。在两项研究中（总样本量为2307），我们测试了违规怪异性是否可以解释厌恶敏感性与其他道德领域相比，与纯洁道德判断的更强关联，但发现对此说法的证据甚微。即使在考虑道德违规行为的（感知）怪异性和（感知）危害性之后，厌恶敏感性与纯洁道德判断之间的关系依然存在。这些研究表明，违规怪异性和危害性无法解释厌恶敏感性-纯洁之间的联系，这与流行的反模块化理论的预测相悖。