Disgust May Play a Key Role in Morality

**LnGrrrR** · 08-15-2010

An interesting article from Boston.com...

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/id...?p1=Upbox_lead

Research has shown that people who are more easily disgusted by bugs are more likely to see gay marriage and abortion as wrong. Putting people in a foul-smelling room makes them stricter judges of a controversial film or of a person who doesn’t return a lost wallet. Washing their hands makes people feel less guilty about their own moral transgressions, and hypnotically priming them to feel disgust reliably induces them to see wrongdoing in utterly innocuous stories.

**LnGrrrR** · 08-15-2010

In another study, Haidt found an even more dramatic result. Using posthypnotic suggestion, he got his subjects to experience a flash of disgust at neutral words (“take” for half of the experimental group, “often” for the others). They then read a short description of a thoughtful, open-minded student council president named Dan. If the description contained their disgust word, however, the subjects took a deep dislike to Dan, and found reasons to condemn his behavior and justify their aversion, reasons that had no connection to the description they had read — “Dan is a popularity-seeking snob,” one said. “It just seems like he’s up to something,” said another.

**spursncowboys** · 08-15-2010

this better not be a govt funded study.

**bigzak25** · 08-15-2010

Good read.

The key to happiness is to be disgusted with the disgusting things we do and think.

Then we try to do better.

Then we find true happiness.

Then we stop judging others.

True story.