Citation

Kollareth D, Allam A, Russell JA. Soc. Cogn. 2019; 37(6): 547-570.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, Guilford Press)

DOI

10.1521/soco.2019.37.6.547

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In five studies (Ns = 32, 240, 60, 300, 1120), we examined judgments made by someone reading about a person killing him- or herself. As a paradigm case of self-harm, the act of self-killing has been hypothesized to be a violation of a distinct set of moral norms called purity and, as such, to elicit disgust and a judgment of its immorality that is relatively invariant with the intention of the violator. Participants indicated their emotional reaction to and immorality judgment of a story protagonist killing him- or herself. Sadness, not disgust, was the modal emotional reaction. Intention mattered: Intentionally killing oneself and killing oneself for revenge was judged more immoral than accidentally killing oneself and killing oneself for altruistic intention. The intentional versus accidental nature of the killing as well as individual differences in rated disgust, but not in grossed-out, predicted immorality judgments. © 2019 Guilford Publications, Inc.

Language: en

Keywords

Suicide; Emotion; Self-harm; Moral domain; Purity