The self in moral judgement: How self-affirmation affects the moral condemnation of harmless sexual taboo violations

Marlon Mooijman, Wilco W. Van Dijk
2014 Cognition & Emotion  
People frequently condemn harmless sexual taboo behaviours. Based on self-affirmation theory, we predicted that providing an opportunity to self-affirm decreases the tendency to morally condemn harmless sexual taboos. In Experiment 1, we found evidence that self-affirmation decreases the moral condemnation of harmless sexual taboos and ruled out that this was due to a decrease in how disgusting participants considered taboo acts. In Experiment 2, we replicated this effect and demonstrated the
more » ... diating role of self-directed threat emotions. These results demonstrate that the tendency to morally condemn harmless sexual taboos arises in part from the need to protect selfintegrity. We discuss the implications for the role of the self and emotions in moral judgements and interventions aimed at increasing the acceptability of harmless sexual taboos.
doi:10.1080/02699931.2014.985187 pmid:25472625 fatcat:ziyfi6edy5hfrie7c6xx5ad4ra