DISGUST AND CLEANLINESS: INFLUENCE ON JUDGMENTS OF MORAL CHARACTER CHANGE IN EVERYDAY CONTEXTS

Abstract

Previous research found that disgust led people to make harsher judgments on moral transgressions while cleanliness often resulted in more lenient judgments (Schnall, Benton & Harvey, 2008). This thesis aims to explore whether the influence of disgust and cleanliness will extend beyond single instances of moral acts to judgments of moral character in everyday contexts. The undergraduate participants recruited were primed with disgust and cleanliness using short video clips. They were presented with character vignettes where the characters either performed more negative moral acts or positive moral acts. Participants reported the number of weeks required to perceive meaningful change in the fictional persons’ moral characters. As expected, the results demonstrate the presence of negativity bias in people perception, where it is easier for people to be seen as having changed for the worse than for the better. Contrary to predictions, however, neither disgust nor cleanliness influenced the severity/leniency of the judgments of moral character. Absence of the expected effects suggest that physical purity may not significantly affect judgments of minor moral acts outside of the purity domain. The divergence between previous literature and current findings also highlight potential cultural differences in the judgments of moral character and people perception.