The Moral Value of Disgust

By Charlie Kurth

The disgust that we experience toward things like feces, blood, and tuna salad gone bad is clearly valuable: an important line of defensive against pathogens that may harm us. But things are more complicated when we turn to disgust about moral matters. When we’re disgusted by racism or those who take advantage of the elderly, the emotion seems fitting—a powerful and valuable response morally polluting behavior. Yet when we find ourselves disgusted by inter-racial marriage or those with physical disabilities, our disgust is hardly admirable.

So what should we say about disgust’s value as a moral emotion? In my recent article in Emotion Review, I argue that to answer this question, we need to ask what, if anything, we can do to shape problematic disgust for the better. And when we look to what research in cognitive science tell us about this question—can we cultivate disgust?—we see that we can’t actually cultivate disgust as many presume. That said, we can improve our ability to control when and how we feel our disgust.

To see this, first consider what scholars and public intellectuals say about disgust as a morally valuable emotion. In the eyes of these advocates, not only do we tend to be disgusted by moral wrongs like hypocrisy and exploitation, but the shunning and social excluding that our disgust brings is an apt response to those who pollute the moral fabric. Moreover, in the face of worries about morally problematic disgust—disgust felt at the wrong time or in the wrong way—advocates respond that it’s an emotion we can substantively change for the better. Just like you might overcome the disgust you feel about exotic foods by trying them, you can overcome the disgust you feel about same-sex marriage by spending more time with gay couples.

But the idea that we can substantively change disgust for the better seems mistaken given both experimental work suggesting that increased exposure does little help mitigate problematic disgust, and research on perpetrator disgust—disgust felt by, for example, Nazis as they commit atrocities: while the disgust of some perpetrators appears to fade, many others remain disgusted by the awful acts they do. All this might seem to support the skeptical philosophers and legal scholars who maintain disgust lacks moral value.

However, while there may not be much that we can do to substantively change what we’re disgusted by, we may be able to improve our ability to control when and how we feel our disgust. That is, even if disgust itself is too rigid to be changed, it appears there are other psychological mechanisms associated with disgust—things like our attentional systems and cognitive processing routines—that are more malleable.

Here research on disgust-focused “implementation intentions” is noteworthy. Briefly, implementation intentions are the “if___, then___” rules that guide our actions. Moreover, strategies that make use of implementation strategies aren’t aiming to change disgust itself, but rather are geared toward helping one to develop one’s (non-disgust) attentional and behavioral capacities: allowing one to better recognize situations where one’s disgust response may misfire, so that one can better control one’s resulting response. For instance, someone disgusted by the sight of blood might adopt an implementation intention like “If I see blood, I’ll stay calm and relaxed.”

While researchers have yet to investigate the effectiveness of implementation intentions as correctives for morally problematic disgust, a range of studies have found the technique effective as a way of combating excessive disgust experienced in non-moral situations (e.g., seeing bodily fluids).

There are three lessons to draw from all this. First, we can see—contra skeptics—that that disgust is a morally powerful response to hypocrites, cheaters, and the like: without disgust, we’d lack an important moral response to those who take advantage of others. But, second, advocates are wrong in thinking disgust is a malleable emotion that we can substantively change for the better.

Finally, looking closely at the science of disgust sheds light on the nature of moral development. While the received opinion maintains the becoming a better person is a process whereby one substantively transforms morally problematic emotions, what we see in disgust suggests a better strategy might aim toward developing the emotional self-awareness and self-control needed to manage emotions that would otherwise lead us astray.

Article Details

Cultivating Disgust: Prospects and Moral Implications
Charlie Kurth
First Published April 11, 2021 Research Article
DOI: 10.1177/1754073921990712
Emotion Review

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