On Disease and Deontology -- Influence of Disease Threat on Moral Vigilance

On Disease and Deontology: Multiple Tests of the Influence of Disease Threat on Moral Vigilance. Damian Murray, Nicholas Kerry & Will Gervais. Social Psychological and Personality Science, https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550617733518

Abstract: Threat has been linked to certain facets of moral cognition, but the specific implications of disease threat for moral judgment remain poorly understood. Across three studies, we investigated the role of perceived disease threat in shaping moral judgment and hypothesized that perceived disease threat would cause people to be more sensitive to moral violations (or more “morally vigilant”). All three studies found a positive relationship between dispositional worry about disease transmission and moral vigilance. Additional analyses suggested that this worry was more strongly related to vigilance toward binding moral foundations. Study 3 demonstrated that moral vigilance was higher in individuals for whom the threat of disease was experimentally made salient, relative to individuals in both a neutral and a nondisease threat condition. Taken together, these results suggest that perceived disease threat may influence people’s moral vigilance across moral domains.

My comment: The Conservatives are a bore, but are not stupid. They are more empirical than Progressives, and many of their obsessions (security/defense, religion/morality, and maybe patriotism) have perfectly normal motivations, not only instincts/genetic programming. Progressives should try to understand better Conservatives (and viceversa, obviously :-) ).