Effect Of Three-domains Disgust Emotion On Moral Judgment: The Mediation Of Perceived Harm

At present,moral psychology research has broken through the mode of emotion-based psychological mechanism.Researchers have deeply investigated the psychological mechanism of moral judgment and tried to form a high-level and comprehensive theory of cognitive function to interpret moral judgment in a unified way.Gray et al.conducted a series of studies,which is to exam the influence between moral emotion and moral judgent,and found that the perceived harm is the key to predicting moral judgmentis,rather than emotion.Based on these,they proposed the theory of dyadic morality（TDM）,and thought that the production of moral judgment is the combination of norm violation,negative core affect and perceived harm,trying to constitut a cognitive template for explaining moral judgments,which provides a new research opportunity for the"the debate of emotion versus reason"in moral judgment.Disgust is closely related to people’s life and has various types.Rozin et al.（2009）established RHM disgust model with stimulus sources as the classification standard.However,this model is confused and overlapping.Based on this,Tybur（2013）from the perspective of human evolution,questioned the RHM aversion model,put forward the three-domains disgust,which can be effectively identify and differentiate in the aspect of brain mechanisms（Wang,Zhou,&Yang,2018）.The origin of disgust is classified as pathogen,sex and morality.There is a separate neural mechanism between moral disgust and disgust in other fields,indicating that the influence of disgust on moral judgment may not be based on itself,but a more basic psychological variable,which provides a possibility to investigate the psychological mechanism between them.There are three studies in this paper to investigate the effect of three-domains disgust on moral judgment and the mechanism of perceived harm.Study 1 is to revised Tybur et al.’s（2009）the“Three-domains of Disgust Scale”by combining the familiar life fields of college students in China.The measurement indices of the scale were statistically tested and the results showed that the scale had good reliability and validity.The revision of the scale not only confirmed the rationality of the structure of“three-domains disgust”,but also demonstrated the close relationship between disgust and moral judgment.Study 2 continued to examine the relationship of three-domains disgust,perceived harm and moral judgment,which found that three-domains disgust and perceived harm were both effectively predict moral judgment,however,compared to disgust,perceived harm is a more effective predictor of the moral judgment,in which the regression equation is Z_y=0.08+0.20Z_x厌恶+0.70Z_{x伤害感知.}The result demonstrates the universality of perceived harm in the three-domains of disgust.Perceived harm mediates between sexual disgust,pathogen disgus and moral judgment,however,it is not significant in the field of moral disgust,which is inconsistent with the existing research results.Study 3 adopts the experimental method,and further investigates the mechanism of perceived harm in the field of moral disgust through disgust priming,and the results showed:（1）the moral judgment score of the disgust group（M=5.49,SD=0.77）tndency to be higher than that of the non-disgust group（M=5.17,SD=0.58）,t（62）=1.91,p=0.061,d=0.47.（2）the overall perceived harm score（M=5.67,SD=0.83）of the disgust group was significantly higher than that of the non-disgust group（M=5.21,SD=0.91）,t（62）=2.12,p=0.037,d=0.53.（3）the mediating analysis by using Bootstrap method found that perceived harm had a significant mediating effect between moral disgust and moral judgment.The results of comprehensive studies 2 and 3 show that perceived harm plays an intermediary role between the three-domains disgust and moral judgment,and is an important psychological mechanism,which supports the theory of dyadic morality（TDM）.The study got the following conclusions:1.Compared to disgust,perceived harm is a more effective predictor of the moral judgment;2.People’s moral judgment is more severe in the state of disgust;3.People have a higher degree of perceived harm in the state of disgust;4.Perceived harm mediates the relation between different domains disgust and moral judgment.