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Disgust-based intuitions and personality traits affect moral judgments.

Björklund, Fredrik LU orcid (2007) Neuroethics and Empirical Moral Psychology
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organization
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type
Contribution to conference
publication status
published
subject
conference name
Neuroethics and Empirical Moral Psychology
conference location
Oslo, Norway
conference dates
2007-03-14 - 2007-03-16
language
English
LU publication?
yes
additional info
In a series of experiments the role of intuition in moral judgment was studied using a misattribution method, where morally irrelevant disgusting features were hypothesized to illicit a feeling of moral wrongness. Participants were presented with stories describing morally questionable actions and were asked to make judgments of how wrong they were. Judgments were affected by the morally irrelevant disgusting features in the stories, and this disgust-effect was moderated by personality traits (as measured by self-report questionnaires). Participants high in disgust sensitivity and low in self-reported use of systematic reasoning made relatively harsh moral judgments, as did those high in self-reported use of intuition. Instructions to process rationally did not lead to correction of the judgments for irrelevant disgust. However, explicit questioning of whether something is wrong just because it’s disgusting did. Finally, an unobtrusive manipulation of level of processing led to correction for irrelevant disgust, but primarily for participants high in reasoning and low in intuition. The role of intuition and reasoning in moral judgment is discussed, and the importance of considering personality variables in moral judgment research is emphasized.
id
83e25915-0ef6-4c2b-88de-3fedb32c8c68 (old id 934361)
date added to LUP
2016-04-04 13:59:11
date last changed
2018-11-21 21:17:34
@misc{83e25915-0ef6-4c2b-88de-3fedb32c8c68,
  author       = {{Björklund, Fredrik}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  title        = {{Disgust-based intuitions and personality traits affect moral judgments.}},
  year         = {{2007}},
}