Embodied Moral Judgments and Behaviours in Real and Virtual Environments
Lead Research Organisation:
Plymouth University
Department Name: Sch of Psychology
Abstract
Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Simone Schnall (Principal Investigator) |
Publications
Cannon P
(2010)
Transgressions and Expressions Affective Facial Muscle Activity Predicts Moral Judgments
in Social Psychological and Personality Science
Centerbar DB
(2008)
Affective incoherence: when affective concepts and embodied reactions clash.
in Journal of personality and social psychology
Huntsinger J. R.
(2013)
The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Psychology
Lau H
(2012)
Quantifying the Value of Emotions Using a Willingness to Pay Approach
in Journal of Happiness Studies
Scheske C
(2012)
The Ethics of "Smart Drugs": Moral Judgments About Healthy People's Use of Cognitive-Enhancing Drugs
in Basic and Applied Social Psychology
Schnall S
(2010)
Direct evidence for the economy of action: glucose and the perception of geographical slant.
in Perception
Schnall S
(2012)
The Immersive Virtual Environment of the digital fulldome: Considerations of relevant psychological processes
in International Journal of Human-Computer Studies
Schnall S
(2010)
Elevation leads to altruistic behavior.
in Psychological science
Schnall S
(2008)
Social Support and the Perception of Geographical Slant.
in Journal of experimental social psychology
| Description | The grant period was immensely productive and resulted in a great number of interesting findings. The following findings stand out as having already resulted in significant impact: 1. Disgust makes moral judgments more severe (Schnall, Haidt, Clore & Jordan, 2008, PSPB). Findings from several experiments suggest that people conflate experiences of physical and moral disgust. In other words, a sense of "that's disgusting!" is interpreted to be indicative of moral rejection when in fact the feeling was actually based on the irrelevant bad smell, or the dirty environment surrounding the person while making the judgment. Thus, people do not always use reasoning when arriving at moral judgments. 2. Cleanliness makes moral judgments less severe (Schnall, Benton & Harvey, 2008, Psychological Science). On the flip side of disgust, additional support for the moral intuition of purity has come from studies manipulating physical purity and looking at the effect on morality, and these studies show that people somehow equate physical purity with mental and spiritual purity. After having the cognitive concept of cleanliness activated (Experiment 1), or after physically cleansing themselves after experiencing disgust (Experiment 2), participants found certain moral actions to be less wrong than participants who had not been exposed to a cleanliness manipulation. The findings support the idea that moral judgment can be driven by intuitive processes rather than reasoning. One of those intuitions appears to be physical purity, because it has a strong connection to moral purity. 3. Moral elevation leads to increased helping behaviour (Schnall, Roper & Fessler, 2010, Psychological Science). Feelings of elevation, elicited by witnessing another person perform a good deed, have been hypothesized to motivate a desire to help others. In Experiment 1, participants experiencing elevation were more likely to volunteer for a subsequent unpaid study than were participants in a neutral state. In Experiment 2, participants experiencing elevation spent approximately twice as long helping the experimenter with a tedious task as participants experiencing mirth or a neutral emotional state. Further, feelings of elevation, but not feelings of amusement or happiness, predicted the amount of helping. Together, these results provide evidence that witnessing another person's altruistic behavior elicits elevation, a discrete emotion that, in turn, leads to tangible increases in altruism. 4. Facial expressions measured by EMG predict moral judgments (Cannon, Schnall & White, 2011, SPPS). We recorded the facial muscle activity relating to disgust and anger while participants considered third-person statements describing good and bad behaviors across a range of moral domains. Facial disgust was highest in response to purity violations, followed by fairness violations. In contrast, harm violations evoked anger expressions. Furthermore, the amount of facial muscle activity predicted participants' moral judgments: Perceived severity of purity and fairness transgressions correlated with facial disgust, whereas harm transgressions correlated with facial anger. These findings suggest that people automatically show a quick emotional response when exposed to moral offenses, which in turn relates to their explicit moral judgments. |
| Exploitation Route | My findings have been described in textbooks (e.g., McBride, 2012; Music, 2014; Miner, 2011; Newton, 2014) and science books targeted at general audiences (e.g., Cummins, 2012; Gill, 2014; Goldman, 2013; Hall, 2010; Haslam, 2012; Lobel, 2014; Jones, 2013; Joy, 2010; Prinz, 2007, Tessman, 2015; Wielenberg, 2014; Wiseman, 2012). |
| Sectors | Education,Government, Democracy and Justice |
| Description | Schnall, Haidt, Clore & Jordan (2008) was the most direct demonstration that physical disgust causally shapes moral disgust, by making moral judgments more severe. According to Google Scholar it has been cited 547 times, with many researchers replicating and extending my findings. It was the most-cited paper in this journal between 2007 and 2013, and is the 18th most cited paper in the history of this journal. Similarly, Schnall, Benton & Harvey (2008) showed the opposite influence, namely that physical cleanliness makes moral judgments less severe, and this paper has been cited 213 times. There is now a highly consistent literature showing the link between physical and moral disgust, which has been summarized in comprehensive review papers (e.g., Chapman & Anderson, 2013). |
| First Year Of Impact | 2008 |