Does Inducing State Sexual Disgust Cause Harsher Moral Judgments? A Preliminary Test

Whether disgust plays a causal role in moral judgments remains a topic of ongoing debate. Seminal works suggested that feelings of disgust can amplify moral judgments; but recent replications and a meta-analysis have challenged these earlier findings. However, extant studies are limited because they have focused on inducing state pathogen disgust while ignoring state sexual disgust. In two preregistered experiments (N = 1,438), we conducted the first test of the causal role of state sexual disgust in moral judgment and examined a range of possible amplification effects, from domain-specific (i.e., amplification of moral judgments directly related to the disgust-eliciting stimulus) to domain-general (i.e., amplification of moral judgments unrelated to the disgust-eliciting stimulus). Consistent with the previous research on state pathogen disgust, we found no evidence in either experiment that inducing sexual disgust leads to harsher moral judgments. We discuss the absence of state disgust effects in light of existing research on trait disgust, which has reliably shown that greater sensitivity to sexual disgust predicts harsher moral judgments.