Moral Intuitions and Emotions: Evaluating the Evidence

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Q: What do adult humans compute that enables their moral intuitions to track moral attributes (such as wrongness)?

Hypothesis:

They rely on the ‘affect heuristic’: ‘if thinking about an act [...] makes you feel bad [...], then judge that it is morally wrong’.

But is the Hypothesis true?

Prediction:

if you make people feel bad (/good) without them realising it, they will be more (/less) inclined to judge that something is morally wrong.

Evidence:

Schnall et al., 2008

‘(Schnall et al., 2008) probed subjects’ responses to moral scenarios featuring morally relevant actions such as eating one’s dead pet dog while priming subjects to feel disgusted. In one experiment, subjects filled out their questionnaires while seated at either a clean desk or a disgusting desk, stained and sticky and located near an overflowing waste bin containing used pizza boxes and dirty-looking tissues. Subjects who were rated as highly sensitive to their own bodily state were more likely to condemn the actions when seated at the disgusting desk than at the clean desk.’

1. Is it really evidence?

Has the study been replicated?

Not as far as I know.

Eg. the same authors pubilshed another study in the same year (Schnall, Benton, et al., 2008) which an attempt to replicate has quite convincingly indicated that the effect is not powerful enough to have been discovered by the original study (Johnson et al., 2014).

Are there similar studies? If so, are the findings convergent?

Never trust a single study.

Eskine et al, 2011 figure 1

Eskine et al. (2011) is another study which appears to support (end extend) Schnall, Haidt, et al. (2008).

Relevant because bitterness is related to disgust.

Different tastes in mouth, ‘using Wheatley and Haidt’s (2005) moral vignettes, which portray various moral trans- gressions (second cousins engaging in consensual incest, a man eating his already-dead dog, a congressman accepting bribes, a lawyer prowling hospitals for victims, a person shoplifting, and a student stealing library books)’ (Eskine et al., 2011).

Also ‘using Wheatley and Haidt’s (2005) moral vignettes, which portray various moral transgressions (second cousins engaging in consensual incest, a man eating his already-dead dog, a congressman accepting bribes, a lawyer prowling hospitals for victims, a person shop-lifting, and a student stealing library books)’ (Eskine et al., 2011).

‘Results revealed a significant effect of bev- erage type, F(2, 51) = 7.368, p = .002, η 2 = .224. Planned contrasts showed that participants’ moral judgments in the bitter condition (M = 78.34, SD = 10.83) were significantly harsher than judgments in the control condition (M = 61.58, SD = 16.88), t(51) = 3.117, p = .003, d = 1.09, and in the sweet condition (M = 59.58, SD = 16.70), t(51) = 3.609, p = .001, d = 1.22’ (Eskine et al., 2011).

‘Judgments in the control and sweet conditions did not differ significantly, t(51) = 0.405, n.s.’ (Eskine et al., 2011).

Are there similar studies? If so, are the findings convergent?

Has the study featured in a review? If so, does the review broadly support the findings of this study?

Chapman & Anderson, 2013 table 2

11 studies here. Note that two studies found no effect of manipulating disgust on moral judgement.

‘To date, almost all of the studies that have manipulated disgust or cleanliness have reported effects on moral judgment. These findings strengthen the case for a causal relationship between disgust and moral judgment, by showing that experimentally evoked disgust---or cleanliness, its opposite---can influence moral cognition’

(Chapman & Anderson, 2013, p. 313)

Chapman & Anderson (2013)

Nice extension

Aside

Does disgust influencte moral evaluations?

- Manipulate Disgust and Measure Morality (Schnall, Haidt, et al., 2008)

Are moral violations disgusting?

- Manipulate Morality and Measure Disgust (Chapman et al., 2009)

Has the study featured in a review? If so, does the review broadly support the findings of this study?

Q: What do adult humans compute that enables their moral intuitions to track moral attributes (such as wrongness)?

Hypothesis:

They rely on the ‘affect heuristic’: ‘if thinking about an act [...] makes you feel bad [...], then judge that it is morally wrong’.

But is the Hypothesis true?

Prediction:

if you make people feel bad (/good) without them realising it, they will be more (/less) inclined to judge that something is morally wrong.

Evidence:

Schnall et al., 2008

‘(Schnall et al., 2008) probed subjects’ responses to moral scenarios featuring morally relevant actions such as eating one’s dead pet dog while priming subjects to feel disgusted. In one experiment, subjects filled out their questionnaires while seated at either a clean desk or a disgusting desk, stained and sticky and located near an overflowing waste bin containing used pizza boxes and dirty-looking tissues. Subjects who were rated as highly sensitive to their own bodily state were more likely to condemn the actions when seated at the disgusting desk than at the clean desk.’

I am leaving it orange. It’s not wrong, just not sufficient.

How to evaluate a hypothesis

Never trust a philosopher.

1. Is it really evidence?

a. Has the study been replicated?

b. Are there similar studies? If so, are the findings convergent?

c. Has the study featured in a review? If so, does the review broadly support the findings of this study?

2. Is the evidence sufficient to justify accepting the hypothesis?

Before we accept the Hypothesis

that the Affect Heuristic

explains moral intuitions,

we need a better argument ...

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