Deontological Guilt and Disgust Sensitivity Modulate Moral Behaviour

Abstract

Objective: Deontological Guilt (DG), and Altruistic Guilt (AG) emerge from the appraisal of violating an internalized rule or an altruistic principle, respectively. DG is strictly connected with Disgust Sensitivity and plays a key role in the development and maintenance of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Previous studies investigated how DG affects responses to hypothetical moral dilemmas, however how DG and Disgust Sensitivity interact modulating moral behavior is still unknown.

Methods: STUDY 1. 46 healthy participants performed an ecological paradigm in which people can spontaneously decide to lie to obtain a reward (egoistic lie) or give it away (altruistic lie) after three emotional inductions: DG, AG or neutral. Furthermore, OCD traits, Morality, Guilt Propensity and Disgust Sensitivity were assessed by means of questionnaires. STUDY 2. 27 participants from the original sample were retested during the COVID-19 lockdown in Italy to ascertain whether the pandemic modified traits related to morality, disgust, guilt or OCD symptoms and whether these changes modulated moral behavior (measured by a task in which cheating was associated to higher pay-offs).

Results: STUDY 1. Compared to the neutral, after the DG induction participants produced less altruistic and more egoistic lies. This effect was stronger in participants with high Disgust Sensitivity. STUDY 2. During the COVID-19 lockdown participants became more sensitive to the Authority pillar of the Moral Foundations and more sensitive to Disgust: this increment in deontological morality affected (im) moral behavior depending on changes in Disgust Sensitivity.

Conclusions: Our data suggest that people with high Disgust Sensitivity are more affected by deontological inductions which translate to higher immorality, supposedly by lowering their moral self-image. These results might have important clinical implications as they suggest that addressing Disgust Sensitivity in therapy, might also decrease the effect of guilt on patients' behavior.

Keywords: deontological guilt; disgust sensitivity; moral behaviour; obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Figure 1.

a) Schematic representation of a block. Each block started with the rating of the baseline emotional status on VAS. Then, participants listened to a prerecorded story to induce neutral emotion or deontological/altruistic sense of guilt. Before and after the card game, subjects rated their current emotional status. At the end of each block participant answered several questions as manipulation check. b) Exemplary trial timeline of the adapted version of the TLCG. A fixation cross (500 ms) appeared before the two cards. After 500 ms, one of the two card became clearly bigger, indicating the opponent’s choice. The two cards stayed on the screen until the participants decided whether to lie or tell the truth to the opponents. Response was provided by pressing either the “S” (card on the center) or “D” (card on the right) depending on the card they intended to assign to the opponent (regardless of the card previously picked by the opponent). Then was no time limit to make this choice. Thus, a feedback appeared on the screen communicating the outcome of the trial. The figure was created by the authors

Figure 2.

Emotional induction manipulation check. Mean scores of self-reported intensity of each emotion pre (white bars) and post (grey bars) inductions, for the Deontological (on top) and the Altruistic (on the bottom) conditions

Figure 3.

Number of lies. Altruistic (Favourable Outcome) and Egoistic (Unfavourable Outcome) lies (mean ± standard error) produced after the three inductions (Neutral, Deontological, Altruistic). The difference between altruistic and egoistic lies was larger after the Deontological induction with respect to the neutral condition (p=0.0035), indicating that participants tended to be more selfish

Figure 4.

Correlation between personality trait and participants’ individual-specific slope for the significant interaction (Best Linear Unbiased Predictors ‒ BLUP s). This figure shows the association between the measure of Disgust Sensitivity (DS-R ‒ TOT) and the Condition X Outcome interaction BLUPs on deceptive behavior. Higher scores in Disgust Sensitivity are associated with a tendency to produce less other-gain lies and more self-gain lies after the Deontological Condition

Figure 5.

Deceptive behavior related to the tendency to feel disgust. The figure shows the effect of the Disgust Sensitivity over the number of lies for each different Condition and Outcome . The slope relative to the altruistic lies (showed in red) is significantly different from zero (p<.05) for the Neutral and the Altruistic condition, indicating that the more participants were high in Disgust Sensitivity the more they lied altruistically. In contrast, the slope relative to the egoistic lies (showed in blue) is significantly different from zero (p<.05) for the Deontological condition, indicating that the more participants were high in Disgust Sensitivity the more they lied egoistically

Figure 6.

Example of Spot The Difference Task (STDT) trial (Scattolin et al., 2021 ‒ Preprint)