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The Role of Disgust in Norms, and of Norms in Disgust Research: Why Liberals Shouldn’t be Morally Disgusted by Moral Disgust

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Abstract

Recently, many critics have argued that disgust is a morally harmful emotion, and that it should play no role in our moral and legal reasoning. Here we defend disgust as a morally beneficial moral capacity. We believe that a variety of liberal norms have been inappropriately imported into both moral psychology and ethical studies of disgust: disgust has been associated with conservative authors, values, value systems, and modes of moral reasoning that are seen as inferior to the values and moral emotions that are endorsed by liberal critics. Here we argue that the meta-ethical assumptions employed by the critics of disgust are highly contentious and in some cases culture bound. Given this, we should avoid adopting simplified meta-ethical positions in experimental moral psychology, as these can skew the design and interpretation of experiments, and blind us to the potential value of moral disgust harnessed in the service of liberal ends.

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Notes

  1. Russell and Giner-Sorolla also argue that disgust is more likely to produce “moral dumbfounding”, and that people are generally much worse at providing reasons for their moral disgust than they are for other moral emotions. This is a vital issue in evaluating disgust, however, for reasons of space, we must set aside this aspect of their challenge.

  2. Tracy and colleagues' account of "hubristic" and "authentic" pride is one further example of this phenomenon (Tracy and Robins 2009; Tracy et al. 2009). They argue that these "forms" of pride are differentially associated with a wide range of psychological variables, with hubristic pride being associated with negative characteristics, and authentic pride with positive ones. This split mirrors the conservative/liberal split insofar as many of the characteristics of hubristic pride that are condemned are related to those we discuss below; e.g., hubristic pride is associated with pride deriving from character- or identity-based traits, while authentic pride is associated with specific, effort-driven achievements. Holbrook et al. (2014a, b) have argued that scales designed to measure authentic versus hubristic pride are measuring not two distinct affective states; rather, the latter scale measures the normative assessments that are imposed by observers on expressions of pride. To this we add the further claim that these assessments themselves reflect the kind of liberal bias that runs throughout discussions of disgust. Similar considerations apply to shame and other negatively regarded emotions (see Deonna et al. 2011 for a defense of shame against these charges).

  3. http://www.gallup.com/poll/149390/record-high-approve-black-white-marriages.aspx.

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Acknowledgments

The material from this paper was presented in Geneva at the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences, first in the THUMOS Lecture Series, and second, at a workshop for the International Summer School in Affective Science (co-taught with Sophie Russell). We thank Sophie, and all audience members for their comments, including Shaun Nichols, David Pizarro, and Simone Schnall. Special thanks also go to Roger Giner-Sorolla for extensive discussion of the topics, and access to unpublished work. The editors of this volume have also been extremely valuable in shaping the paper. J.A. Clark was supported by the Changing Brains project, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Education.

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  1. Institute for Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrueck, 28 Albrechtstrasse #417, 49069, Osnabrück, Germany

    Jason A. Clark

  2. Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, 341 Haines Hall, Box 951553, Los Angeles, CA, 90095-1553, USA

    Daniel M. T. Fessler

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Correspondence to Jason A. Clark.

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Clark, J.A., Fessler, D.M.T. The Role of Disgust in Norms, and of Norms in Disgust Research: Why Liberals Shouldn’t be Morally Disgusted by Moral Disgust. Topoi 34, 483–498 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-014-9240-0

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