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Individual Differences Associated With Moral Judgements:

Disgust Propensity and Need for Cognition

[Author name removed]

Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne

PSYC20009: Personality and Social Psychology

[Tutor name removed]

[Due date removed]

[Word count removed]

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Abstract

Moral dilemmas have been extensively used by psychologists to elucidate the descriptive

psychological states involved in moral judgements. Responses to dilemmas have been

equated to normative ethical standards, with deontology thought to be consistent with

affective processing and utilitarianism consistent with reasoned, effortful processing.

Variance in moral judgements attributable to individual differences has been relatively

understudied. This study investigated whether disgust propensity (DP) and need for cognition

(NFC) is associated with utilitarian outcomes in personal moral dilemmas (PMD) and

impersonal moral dilemmas (IMD). A total of 596 undergraduate psychology students, aged

18 to 68 (M = 22.42, SD = 6.41), completed a series of questionnaires examining DP, NFC,

and utilitarian responses to PMDs and IMDs. Results revealed a significant negative

correlation between DP and utilitarian responses in the PMD condition (r=-.10, p=.02),

however, not in the IMD condition (r=-.04, p=.31). There was no significant positive

correlation between NFC and utilitarian responses in both the PMD (r=.08, p=.06) and IMD

(r=.06, p=.12) conditions. In concert with previous findings, and in light of the limitations

addressed, the results suggest that a dual-process model (Greene et al., 2001) is a sufficient

theoretical framework for moral cognition.

Keywords: moral judgment; deontology; utilitarianism; disgust propensity; need for

cognition
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Individual Differences Associated With Moral Judgements:

Disgust Propensity and Need for Cognition

Two normative ethical frameworks that attempt to codify how one ought to act

morally have been heavily debated amongst philosophers for centuries. Deontology (Kant,

1785/1959) prescribes categorical imperatives, which are principled constraints on the types

of actions that are morally permissible. For utilitarianism (Mill, 1861/1998), the correct moral

action is framed in terms of its consequences, which is the one that brings about the greatest

good for the greatest number.

Moral psychologists have investigated the descriptive psychological processes

involved in formulating moral judgements. Early rationalist approaches championed the role

of conscious processes, suggesting that moral judgements are an artefact of higher-level

abstract reasoning through a reductionist calculous (Kohlberg, 1981). Recently, Haidt’s

(2001) influential Social Intuitionist Model (SIM) forwarded an empirically supported role

for intuitive (rapid affect-laden) processes in moralising the rightness and wrongness of an

act. Haidt (2001) argued a deflationary position for reasoned (effortful deliberation) moral

judgements, claiming that they are infrequent, and take the form of post-hoc rationalisations

of internal sentiments. Contemporary defenders of the role of reason posit that reasoning

processes can partly determine an intuition (Pizarro & Bloom, 2003).

A dual-process model (DPM) (Greene et al., 2001) marries the two approaches and

postulates that moral judgements are modulated by two qualitatively different and competing

neural processes—an emotional route and a cognitive route. Greene et al. (2001) employed a

battery of personal (PMD) and impersonal (IMD) moral dilemmas, modelled from the

prototypical philosopher’s trolley dilemma (Foot, 1967), to measure the inconsistencies in

moral judgements within participants, and equated the responses to a normative ethical

standard.
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IMDs were variants of the “Switch” dilemma (Greene et al., 2001), where a runaway

trolley is on track to kill five people unless someone pulls a lever to divert it onto an alternate

path that kills one. Under this condition, participants systematically engender a

consequentialist response, flipping the switch to save the five (Cushman et al., 2006).

Intuitions for PMDs were best encapsulated with variations of the “footbridge” problem

(Thompson, 1985), where the same trolley is on its way to kill five people yet the only way to

stop it is by pushing (and consequently killing) a fat man of a footbridge. In this condition,

participants elicit nonconsequentialist responses, rendering the action morally impermissible

(Cushman et al., 2006). The tendency to assess the two transgressions asymmetrically,

although the outcome is identical, is attributed to the emotional salience of inflicting harm to

another individual (Greene et al., 2001).

Indeed, neuroimaging results revealed increased activation of emotional brain

processes in PMD condition compared to IMD condition; which underpins rule violations in

Kantian deontology (Greene et al., 2001). Radical utilitarian responders exhibited

pronounced activation of the neural substrates associated with higher-level controlled

processes (Greene et al., 2004), as well as increased reaction times which is illustrative of the

effortful cognitive control to override the visceral automatic response. To corroborate the

correlational findings, experimental evidence revealed that a cognitive load manipulation

interfered specifically with utilitarian judgements of PMDs (Conway & Gawronski, 2013;

Greene et al., 2008).

Valdesolo and DeSteno (2006) found direct evidence for the causal influence of

emotional processing and concluded that negative reflexive emotions engender

nonconsequentialist responses. The intuitive route to moral cognition is further validated with

evidence of patients with reduced emotional sensitivity from ventromedial prefrontal cortex

damage whom follow the utility principle in PMD judgements (Koenigs et al., 2007).
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The emotional processing of disgust is influential in shaping moral intuitions. It is

likely to have evolved through natural selection as a functional withdrawal mechanism to

avoid particular substances and dangerous pathogens (Haidt et al., 1994). Prior work

demonstrates that various experimental techniques used to induce a state of disgust produced

more severe moral condemnations for violations of certain actions (Schnall et al., 2008;

Wheatley & Haidt, 2005), and a preferential willingness to endorse the nonconsequentialist

position in PMDs and IMDs (Ugazio et al., 2012). Similarly, exposure to an odorous smell

prompted participants to negatively evaluate a whole social group (Inbar et al., 2012).

Strikingly, even actions that bear no moral significance can transgress a moral boundary by

virtue of being perceived as disgusting (Pizarro et al., 2011).

Individuals who have a higher dispositional trait tendency for disgust have shown

more negative implicit (intuitive) attitudes towards homosexuality (Inbar et al., 2009), yet

interestingly, their explicit judgements endorsed an egalitarian principle. These results fit

neatly in the DPM, insofar as moral intuitions can be counteracted by conscious reasoned

judgment. Finally, one study elucidated a negative association between disgust propensity

(DP) and utilitarian judgements in PMDs (Choe & Min, 2011) (IMD trials were absent);

further investigation into the variances predicted by individual DP differences is a purpose of

this paper.

The DPM also implicates controlled-cerebral processes in moral judgements. For

instance, if instructed to deliberatively reflect before reacting to a moral violation, answers

are more rational (Pizarro et al., 2003). Cushman et al. (2006) showed that subjects exhibited

sufficient reasoning abilities by justifying their judgements for action-versus-omission

dilemmas; yet in cases involving contact (synonymous with PMDs) participants struggled to

endorse the relevant principle for why they judged the infraction as morally wrong,

suggesting reasoning processes were somewhat inert in their initial responses. Additionally,
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in extreme catastrophe cases, deontological rules are overridden and consequentialist

solutions endorsed (Nichols & Mallon, 2006).

A more recent study demonstrated that inducing a state reflectiveness increased

utilitarian responses (UR), and a follow-up study found that dispositional proneness to trait

reflectiveness is associated with increased consequentialist judgements in high-conflict

dilemmas (Paxton et al., 2011). Utilitarian inclinations have also been positively associated

with individuals who are higher deliberative thinkers (Conway & Gawronski, 2013) as they

are more likely to ignore or override affective processes (Bartels, 2008).

A synthesis of the above findings provides necessary and sufficient evidence to

demonstrate a causal relationship between the dual-processes and moral judgements.

Investigations into individual personality differences and the associative influence on moral

judgements for IMDs and PMDs has been relatively understudied. Thus, the aim of the

present study is to examine the relationships between Need for Cognition (NFC), DP and UR

to IMDs and PMDs. It is hypothesized that there will be a negative correlation between DP

and consequentialist responses to IMDs and PMDs; and a positive correlation between NFC

and consequentialist responses to IMDs and PMDs.

Method

Participants

596 (151 males and 445 females) undergraduate psychology students aged 18 to 68

(M = 22.42, SD = 6.41) participated in the experiment.

Materials and Procedure

The experiment was undertaken during the participants’ laboratory class and

supervised by a tutor. Three questionnaires were completed using computers in the order

presented below.
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DP was measured on an 8-item sub-scale of the Disgust Propensity and Sensitivity

Scale-Revised (DPSS-R) (Olatunji et al., 2007). Responses to statements such as “I feel

repulsed” were rated on a 5-point Likert scale which ranged from 1 (never) to 5 (always).

Scores were averaged across all items to produce a summary scale.

NFC was measured on an 18-item NCF scale (Cacioppo et al., 1984). Participants

responded to statements such as “I would prefer complex to simple problems” on a 9-point

Likert scale which ranged from -4 (very strongly disagree) to 4 (very strongly agree).

Negatively worded items were reverse coded, and scores were then averaged across all items

to produce a summary scale.

Moral judgements were measured by responses to personal (footbridge) and

impersonal (switch) dilemmas (outlined in introduction) on a 6-point Likert scale ranging

from 1 (absolutely unacceptable) to 6 (absolutely acceptable). Higher scores reflected

utilitarian positions and lower scores reflected deontological judgements.

Results

As shown in Table 1, participants revealed a moderate tendency to experience disgust

(DP) and above average NFC. Participants were also marginally inclined to take a utilitarian

position for IMDs; however, in the PMD condition, the utilitarian position was rated slightly

to moderately unacceptable.

Table 1

Means and Standard Deviations for DP, NFC, IMD, and PMD

Variables M SD
Disgust Propensity (DP) 2.75 0.51

Need for Cognition (NFC) 1.09 1.06

Response to Impersonal Moral Dilemma (IMD) 3.65 1.42

Response to Personal Moral Dilemma (PMD) 2.46 1.37

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Pearson Correlation coefficients were used to analyse the relationships between DP,

NFC, and UR to IMDs and PMDs. There was no significant negative correlation identified

between DP and UR for IMDs, r(594)=-.04, p=.31; however, there was a significant negative

correlation between DP and UR for PMDs, r(594)=-.10, p=.02. For the NFC variable, there

was no significant positive correlation with UR in IMDs r(594)=.06, p=.12; nor was there a

significant positive correlation with UR in PMDs, r(594)=.08, p=.06.

Discussion

The significant result in the current study supports the hypothesis that URs in PMDs

negatively correlate with DP. For IMDs, a negative correlation between URs and DP was

observed, however the results were not significant. Likewise, contrary to the hypotheses,

there were no significant associations between URs and NFC for PMDs and IMDs (albeit the

association ran in the hypothesized positive direction).

The significant result is congruent with previous findings which is to say that disgust

(among other emotions), as a trait tendency (Choe & Min, 2011) or an extraneous

manipulation (Schnall et al., 2008; Ugazio et al., 2012), is implicated in moralizing the

permissibility of an act. Both the DPM (Greene et al., 2007) and SIT jointly explain the result

insofar as they propose an affective source for moral judgements.

The null result between DP and URs in IMDs is somewhat surprising since Ugazio et

al.’s (2012) observation across multiple IMDs identified an effect that an induced state of

disgust influences moral judgements to the same degree as those those observed in PMDs.

One explanation for the divergent results could be the difference in the emotional salience

concerning an intense momentary state of emotion versus a dispositional tendency to

experience an emotion. The former could recruit affective brain processes to a greater extent

than the latter. Thus, the result is in line with the DPM, in that IMDs trigger less emotion,

even for people who have a proneness to DS, and therefore consequentialist judgements
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prevail. Another explanation lies in the strategies individuals with a tendency toward disgust

employ to downregulate their emotions (Helion & Pizarro, 2014).

It is conceivable, that individuals who are high on DS would elicit more

nonconsequentialist responses to IMDs (and PMDs) when prompted by a disgust

manipulation. A combined correlational and experimental design could be a line of further

research to disassociate the effect of an emotional state and trait, and account for variability

between individuals. Inclusion of other DS scales which specifically measures moral disgust

would also be a valuable exercise (Helion & Pizarro, 2014).

Other studies have used a dichotomous forced-choice paradigm to evaluate responses

to moral dilemmas (Conway & Gawronski, 2013; Ugazio et al., 2012). It could be that the

strength of emotional processes is diminished when rating permissibility of an infraction on a

Likert scale (Choe & Min, 2011). This too, is a matter for future investigation.

The study also failed to find evidence to support the expectation that individuals with

a tendency towards NFC also judge IMDs and PMDs in a utilitarian manner. These results

are somewhat discrepant from the empirically supported claims postulated by the DPM

which lends credence to a cerebral route in processing moral judgements, and which is

acutely characterized by individuals who are higher deliberative thinkers (Bartels, 2008;

Conway & Gawronski, 2013; Paxton et al., 2011). It is possible that the egregious nature of

the PMD condition yielded the null result, however, this is not a reasonable defense for the

results in the IMD condition, which perhaps is better encapsulated by the intuitionist account

(Haidt, 2001) for moral cognition. Alternatively, confusion over the relevant moral principle

at play could account for the absence of significant associations in subjects with high NFC

(Cushman et al., 2006).

One explanation for the null results rests on the validity of the self-report NFC scale.

The NFC measurement alone may not accurately reflect the cognitive processes involved in
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judging dilemmas. A combination of additional personality measures like the Cognitive

Reflection Test and the Rational-Experiential Inventory (Paxton et al., 2011; Conway &

Gawronski, 2013; Bartels, 2008), may more aptly capture deliberative processing.

Another limitation pertains to the scope of the dilemmas used. The single sacrificial

PMD and IMD in the current study may not be sufficient enough to extract a robust result.

For a future study, it is recommended that a more extensive and heterogeneous taxonomy of

dilemmas (that also probe other moral values) be included in the design to achieve a more

reliable and informative result (Bartels, 2008; Conway & Gawronski, 2013; Paxton et al.,

2011).

Finally, dilemmas that pit ethical standards against each other may not capture the

more nuanced justifications with respect to cross-cultural differences in moral norms (Haidt,

2001) and individual protected values (Bartels, 2008). The harmful nature of the IMD and

PMD stimulus in the current study entails an objectionable infraction (killing), for which

participants could selectively endorse a normative deontological rule against. Therefore, one

ought to be prudent in parsing the observations as intuitive errors in judgement.

In summary, the current study provides insight into how individual differences in DP

and NFC influence moral judgments. The question as to which is the correct philosophical

framework to evaluate moral judgments is debatable however further development of

descriptive theories that explain the interplay of reason and emotion in moral cognition will

help us better understand human nature.

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