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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Psychol.
Sec. Personality and Social Psychology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1395439

People Who Seem Disgusting Seem More Immoral

Provisionally accepted
Sean M. Laurent Sean M. Laurent 1,2*Lois Li Lois Li 2
  • 1 The Pennsylvania State University (PSU), University Park, Pennsylvania, United States
  • 2 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, Illinois, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    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 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.

    Keywords: disgust, emotion, moral judgment, Moral Character, Punishment, person perception Deleted: (e.g., 21) Deleted: (e.g., 7

    Received: 03 Mar 2024; Accepted: 29 Apr 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Laurent and Li. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Sean M. Laurent, The Pennsylvania State University (PSU), University Park, 16802, Pennsylvania, United States

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