The Effect Of Disgust On Moral Behaviors And Its Psychological Mechanism

According to the adaptive evolutionary theory,moral disgust originates from core disgust,which serves primarily as a food-rejection response.Along with the society progress,moral disgust forms and affects social morality and moral behaviors.There is a recent upswing in research interest on the moral implications of disgust.Two experiments were conducted in the present studies to explore the influence of disgusts on unethical behaviors,and brain substrates,physiological features of disgusts were studied as well.In study 1,45 subjects viewed pictures and completed problem-solving matrix task,an unambiguous measure of unethical behavior.In study 2,moral disgust-inducing,core disgust-inducing and neutral pictures were presented in an fNIRS block design.Physiological data was also recorded by the Biopac MP150 system in the second studies.The results revealed that,subjects in core disgust group were more likely to engage in unethical behaviors than those in other groups.In addition,the response pattern of disgust was characterized by decelerated heart rate and increased skin temperature.Furthermore,women displayed stronger brain activation than men to disgusting pictures in the anterior prefrontal cortex(aPFC),dorsolateral prefrontal cortex(DLPFC)and orbitofrontal area.