Disgust and Anger Relate to Different Aggressive Responses to Moral Violations

Abstract

In response to the same moral violation, some people report experiencing anger, and others report feeling disgust. Do differences in emotional responses to moral violations reflect idiosyncratic differences in the communication of outrage, or do they reflect differences in motivational states? Whereas equivalence accounts suggest that anger and disgust are interchangeable expressions of condemnation, sociofunctional accounts suggest that they have distinct antecedents and consequences. We tested these accounts by investigating whether anger and disgust vary depending on the costs imposed by moral violations and whether they differentially correspond with aggressive tendencies. Results across four studies favor a sociofunctional account: When the target of a moral violation shifts from the self to another person, anger decreases, but disgust increases. Whereas anger is associated with high-cost, direct aggression, disgust is associated with less costly indirect aggression. Finally, whether the target of a moral violation is the self or another person influences direct aggression partially via anger and influences indirect aggression partially via disgust.

Keywords: aggression; anger; disgust; emotions; morality; open data; open materials.

Fig. 1.

Results from Study 1: mean ratings of anger and disgust in the two target conditions (self vs. other). Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals. The dagger and asterisk indicate the significance of the differences between conditions (^†p < .10, *p < .05).

Fig. 2.

Results from Study 2: mean ratings of anger (controlling for disgust) and disgust (controlling for anger) when the target was the self and when the target was another person. Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals. Asterisks indicate a significant difference between moral violations targeting the self and those targeting another person (***p < .001).

Fig. 3.

Results from Study 4: mean ratings of anger and disgust in the two target conditions (self vs. other). Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals. The dagger and asterisks indicate the significance of the differences between conditions (^†p < .10, **p < .01).

Fig. 4.

Results from Study 4: mean endorsements of direct aggression (controlling for indirect aggression) and indirect aggression (controlling for direct aggression) in the two target conditions (self vs. other), controlling for participants’ sex. Error bars indicate 95% confidence intervals. Asterisks indicate a significant difference between conditions (***p < .001).

Fig. 5.

Results from Study 4: unstandardized regression coefficients for the effects of target condition on endorsement of direct and indirect aggression, as mediated by ratings of anger and disgust. The models controlled for participants’ sex, trait aggression, and trait disgust. Covariances between anger and disgust ratings and between endorsement of direct and indirect aggression were also controlled for. Values above the dashed arrows refer to residual and total (in parentheses) direct effects of target condition on endorsements of aggression. Values above the solid arrows refer to the effects of target condition on the mediators (anger and disgust) and the effects of the mediators on endorsements of direct and indirect aggression. The dagger and asterisks indicate marginally significant and significant paths (^†p < .10, **p < .01).