Source
Curry, Jones Chesters & Van Lissa (2019), LIT-496, read in NOTE-412, Studies 2 and 3a. The prediction is Curry (2016), LIT-503, read in NOTE-408, p. 40. The harmless-wrongs studies are reported in Haidt (2001), LIT-511, read in NOTE-403.
What was actually shown
The prediction. “Behaviour that has nothing to do with cooperation … will be regarded as morally neutral” (LIT-503, p. 40). The chapter says MFT’s purity domain has “no apparent connection to cooperation” (p. 42).
UK, n = 1,042 (LIT-496, Study 2). MFQ Relevance means on a 1–6 scale: Care 4.63, Fairness 4.46, Authority 3.89, Purity 3.80, Ingroup 3.77. Purity forms a distinct Judgement factor.
US, n = 469 (LIT-496, Study 3a). MFQ purity Relevance mean 4.19, against 4.31 for ingroup and authority. The MFQ purity Judgement subscale has α = .75, the highest of the MFQ Judgement subscales.
The authors’ reading. Purity’s relevance “appear[s] to contradict” the theory and “remains to be explained” (p. 27). Their reply is that purity is not a coherent domain and that disgust may serve several cooperation problems (p. 40, endnote xv).
Harmless wrongs (LIT-511, p. 5). In Haidt, Koller & Dias (1993), Americans and Brazilians condemned harmless offensive acts, such as eating one’s dead dog, and affect predicted the judgments better than claims of harm.
What could have come out otherwise. Purity items could have been rated irrelevant, near the bottom of the scale. They were rated with loyalty and authority, which the theory counts as cooperative.
What this does not say
- That morality-as-cooperation is refuted. The theory also predicts that sexual, religious and dietary morality will turn out cooperative (LIT-503, p. 40). If purity is cooperative, the observation is no counterexample. Fitouchi, André & Baumard (THEORY-494) argue that it is, for puritanical norms.
- How often societies moralize purity. This is self-report from people asked about purity, in WEIRD online samples. It is not blind coding of what a society moralizes, which is the test THEORY-468 needs.
- That disgust explains it. Whether purity condemnation tracks disgust, harm or perceived self-control is the dispute between THEORY-539 and THEORY-494, and these data do not touch it.
- That purity is one domain. MFQ purity is a single factor in some samples. In others it merges with ingroup and authority; in the US sample of Study 3a the MFQ’s Relevance items give two factors, one of them Ingroup/Authority/Purity.
Connections
- It is the observation that sets THEORY-468 against THEORY-539, and that THEORY-494 and Rai & Fiske (THEORY-626) each try to bring inside cooperation.
- The harmless-wrongs studies are reported in Haidt’s social intuitionist model (THEORY-558) as evidence that affect, not perceived harm, drives moral judgment. Here they serve only as evidence that purity violations are condemned.
- The Moral Foundations side’s version of the same result is the MFQ-2’s Purity factor (THEORY-613), whose cross-national comparisons are its least secure.