Both philosophers and literary critics have championed artworks as necessary to moral education. As a result many of these critics believe that art that is bad or immoral can causally affect our character, resulting in moral harm. Moral harm is the idea that artworks possess a strong disposition to affect our moral beliefs such that we are less able to distinguish between what is good and what is bad. I examine this concept of moral harm and argue that immoral artworks do not have this kind of causal power over our moral beliefs. Proponents of the moral harm thesis are in error to attribute such a power to artworks. Additionally, I propose a definition of immoral artworks consistent with moral harm, as well as discuss the distinction between immoral artworks and artworks that are merely elicit disgust or offense.

Feelings of disgust may have effects on one’s moral judgment; specifically that experience of disgust has linked to increased severity of moral judgments. Additionally, one’s political beliefs may also affect one’s moral judgment, such as conservatives tend to make harsher judgment toward moral situations and behaviors. A 2 x 2 x 2 factorial quasi-experiment has been proposed to study 420 participants, legal adults from both conservative and liberal neighborhoods, randomly assigned to one of two conditions, disgust-eliciting versus neutral. Participants will view either four disgust-eliciting photographs or four neutral photographs, and then complete survey questions on disgust rating, moral judgment, disgust sensitivity, and political self-identification. It is hypothesized that, participants who identify as liberals, will feel less disgusted by the photos than conservative participants, and have more lenient moral judgment, whereas participants who identify as conservatives, will feel more disgusted by the photos than liberals, and have much harsher moral judgment.

A phenomenon explored in the field of the cognitive neuroscience of morality is moral sensitivity, which is a collective name for a subjective experience related to the ability to detect and respond to morally relevant cues in a given social situation. This thesis will review the underlying neural mechanisms of moral sensitivity and three key components: Empathy, moral disgust and moral intuition, also called moral “gut-feeling.” Initially, the thesis provides a basic explanation of what moral sensitivity entails and the primary observations of which brain regions are often associated with moral sensitivity. Studies show that emotion and cognition seem to be essential to the experience of moral sensitivity, which will be further emphasized by reviewing the chosen key components. Research on morality and empathy suggests that the affective and the cognitive components of empathy each are essential to moral sensitivity. The second key component, moral disgust, describes how moral sensitive people react to violations to society by being motivated to keep away from social interactions with poor moral influence. Research on the third key component explains how moral sensitivity can be affected by moral intuitions, here moral “gut-feelings,” depending on the closeness and emotional salience in a given situation.

Le dégoût est une émotion au cœur de notre vie individuelle et collective. A la fois « gardien » du corps et de l’esprit, un dégoût physique se distingue d’un dégoût moral. Dans une première recherche (Etude 1), nous avons examiné les caractéristiques de ces deux types de dégoût à partir de récits d’expériences émotionnelles vécues. Une analyse de contenu thématique ainsi qu’une analyse lexicale informatisée de ces récits (logiciel ALCESTE) ont mis en évidence que le dégoût physique passe par les sens et émerge lors de situations où l’individu est « acteur » de ce qui se passe alors que le dégoût moral, moins pur car mêlé de colère et de tristesse, serait ressenti après observation et évaluation d’une situation de transgression morale (ex. trahison). Le second objectif de cette thèse était d’examiner les conséquences du dégoût physique et moral sur la perception stéréotypée et déshumanisée d’autrui (Dasgupta et al., 2009 ; Harris & Fiske, 2006 ; Tiedens & Linton, 2001). Deux recherches (Etudes 2 et 3) nous ont permis de mettre en évidence qu’une compatibilité entre le dégoût incident (i.e. induit indépendamment de la cible de l’évaluation) et le dégoût intégral chronique (i.e. suscité par l’appartenance groupale de la cible) conduit les individus à baser davantage leur jugement sur leurs stéréotypes. De plus, l’étude 3 suggère de considérer dans ce processus, outre le dégoût chronique, le dégoût intégral épisodique (i.e. évoqué par le comportement de la cible ; Bodenhausen, 1993). Dans une quatrième étude, nous avons examiné l’impact d’une compatibilité entre le dégoût chronique et épisodique sur la perception stéréotypée. Les résultats montrent que cette compatibilité conduit à une stéréotypie plus importante lorsque la cible appartient à un groupe protégé (i.e. obèse). En outre, cette recherche met au jour le rôle du dégoût comme facteur de déshumanisation, mais aussi l’effet d’une émotion positive de sympathie dans le processus de « ré-humanisation ». L’ensemble de ce travail souligne le rôle clé des émotions intégrales dans la perception sociale et laisse apparaître la nécessité de s’intéresser au dégoût et à ses effets afin de comprendre et de lutter contre l’exclusion sociale dont certains groupes sont victimes / Disgust is at the heart of our individual and collective life. As disgust may operate both as a “Guardian” of the body and the soul, theories of disgust usually distinguish between physical and moral disgust. In a first study we explored the characteristics of these two types of disgust by content-analyzing participants’ narrations of past emotional experiences. A thematic content analysis and a lexical analysis (using the ALCESTE software) show that physical disgust most often refers to direct sensory and perceptual experiences that are recalled and described from the “actor” perspective. Moral disgust, on the other hand, is a more complex emotion that is often mixed with the feeling of anger and sadness. It is less immediate because it implies the evaluation of someone’s behavior as unfair or morally blameworthy (e.g. betrayal). The second aim of this thesis was to examine the consequences of physical and moral disgust on the stereotypical perception and dehumanization of others (Dasgupta et al., 2009; Harris & Fiske, 2006; Tiedens & Linton, 2001). Two studies (Studies 2 and 3) show that the compatibility between incidental disgust (i.e. disgust that is unrelated to the target of the judgment) and chronic integral disgust (i.e. disgust aroused by the target’s group membership) leads individuals to rely more on stereotypes in their judgment. Moreover, study 3 suggests that it may be necessary to consider also episodic integral disgust (i.e. disgust aroused by the target’s behavior; Bodenhausen, 1993). In a fourth study, we therefore examined the impact of the compatibility between chronic and episodic integral disgust on stereotyping. Our results show that compatibility leads to a greater stereotypical perception of targets, especially those belonging to a protected social group (i.e. obese persons). Finally, this last study reveals that individuals tend to dehumanize “disgusting” others and that feeling sympathy towards others is important in the process of “re-humanization”. This thesis underlines the key role of integral emotions on social perception and the necessity of studying disgust and its effects in order to understand and to fight social exclusion