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Powerful guts: how power limits the role of disgust in moral judgment
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Content
Running head: POWERFUL GUTS 1
Powerful Guts:
How Power Limits the Role of Disgust in Moral Judgment
Erica Beall
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(PSYCHOLOGY)
August 2013
POWERFUL GUTS 2
Table of Contents
Abstract 3
Powerful Guts:
How Power Limits the Role of Disgust in Moral Judgments
4
Study 1 18
Study 2 22
Study 3 29
Study 4 32
General Discussion
38
References
43
Appendix:
Scales and measures utilized in this research.
49
POWERFUL GUTS 3
Abstract
This research explores the psychological relationship between power and disgust, and the
implications of this relationship for moral judgments. Drawing on two major theories of power -
Approach/Inhibition Theory (Keltner, Gruenfeld & Anderson, 2003) and Situated Focus Theory
(Weick & Guinote, 2008) - I derive competing predictions about how power should affect the
experience of disgust. On the whole, these studies find evidence that power buffers against the
visceral experience of disgust, and thus limits the influence of disgust on moral judgment. These
results support the Approach/Inhibition Theory of power, which states that power engages the
behavioral “approach” system, and suppresses the behavioral “inhibition” system. Additionally,
they suggest limits to the Situated Focus Theory’s conjecture that power increases people’s
reliance on their own emotional and visceral states. The effects of power on two different
dimensions of the disgust response are examined, and a possible reconciliation of the
Approach/Inhibition and Situated Focus theories is discussed.
POWERFUL GUTS 4
Powerful Guts
How Power Limits the Role of Disgust in Moral Judgment
Moral beliefs are commonly assumed to be fixed and unassailable, a fundamental
reflection of one’s character and personal identity. Research has shown, however, that while
morality is indeed deeply entrenched at the level of abstract principles and values, when it comes
to the application of those values to specific situations and behaviors, they can be quite flexible
(Graham, Meindl, & Beall, 2012; Hirsch, Galinsky & Zhong, 2011). One of the most important
emotional influences on moral judgment is disgust, which can increase the severity of moral
judgments even when it is induced in a manner that is entirely peripheral with respect to the
target of the judgment (Eskine, Kacinik, & Prinz, 2011; Schnall, Haidt, Clore, & Jordan, 2008;
Wheatley & Haidt, 2005). The social position that a person occupies can also affect the moral
judgments that he or she makes. In particular, occupying a position of power has been shown to
increase the severity of moral judgments, presumably because high-power roles are associated
with a sense of entitlement that entails the right the judge others, and possibly also because an
increased approach-orientation among powerful people leads them to be more aggressive in their
moral condemnations (Lammers, Stapel, & Galinsky, 2010).
The fact that both power and disgust exert similar effects on moral judgments is all the
more fascinating because power and disgust operate through opposing motivational systems.
Since power and disgust engage the behavioral activation and inhibition systems, respectively,
they should promote patterns of perception and behavior that tend toward opposing goals
(approach and avoidance); and yet, when it comes to moral judgment, their effects tend to be the
same – namely, increasing the severity of moral blame or punishment judgments. However,
POWERFUL GUTS 5
while many independent effects of power and disgust have been demonstrated, it is not known
how power and disgust interact when they are experienced simultaneously, or how their
interaction bears on morality. The results of this interaction are of particular interest because they
can shed light on how power responds to inhibition, thus further illuminating the role of
approach-orientation in the psychological effects of power. Further, the effect that power has on
the known relationship between disgust and moral judgments can reveal more about the
psychological mechanisms behind that relationship.
Here I review the two major psychological theories of power (and the research that
supports them), as well as what is known about the effects of power on moral judgment.
Following that, I present a summary of what is known about the psychology of disgust (again,
particularly as it relates to moral judgment). I contrast two competing hypotheses derived from
the Situated Focus and Approach/Inhibition theories about the way in which power and disgust
will interact, and how this interaction will affect moral judgment. I then present four studies in
which I examine the joint effects of power and disgust on moral judgment in order to test those
two competing hypotheses, and explore the psychological relationship between disgust and
power more generally. The results of these studies shed light on the underlying psychological
mechanisms behind power, and also have implications for the psychological processes that
inform moral judgments.
Power
In social psychology, power is often defined as influence over others that derives from
control over valuable resources, and the ability to administer rewards and punishments
(Galinsky, 2003; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959). In this respect, power is distinct from personality
dominance or assertiveness, both of which may increase one’s ability to gain power, but are
POWERFUL GUTS 6
differentiated from it by the fact that power is both situational and relational: power must be had
over someone (Anderson & Berdahl, 2002). While power-driven hierarchies of dominance and
submission are prevalent in the social lives of many animals, for human beings the experiences
of having and lacking power are subjectively rich, with distinct affective, cognitive, and
behavioral consequences (Sapolski, 2005; Sidanius, Levin, Federico & Pratto, 2001). Next, I will
review what is known about those consequences.
Power promotes action and positive affect. In an experiment that allowed subjects to
exercise power by determining the distribution of reward money to other participants, Berdhal
and Martorana (2006) found that those given power expressed significantly more positive affect
in an ensuing discussion, and reported experiencing more positive affect than subjects who had
not been given power. Even when positive affect and reward are not directly involved,
individuals high in power display a strong action-orientation. In a classic demonstration of this
phenomenon, Galinsky and colleagues (2003) primed participants with power and then subjected
them to an unpleasant environmental stimulus (an annoying fan blowing directly at them) in a
situation that was deliberately constructed so that it would be unclear to the subjects whether or
not it was permissible for them to adjust the fan. The results of the study showed that high-power
subjects were significantly more likely to turn the fan off, thus indicating both their strong
action-orientation and their disregard for the presence of cues indicating that this action might
lead to punishment or other negative social consequences. Since high power subjects were less
concerned with the potential ramifications of taking an action that was not necessarily
appropriate, this line of research provides evidence that power decreases feelings of vulnerability
to punishment, loss, and other negative social consequences (see also Anderson & Galinsky,
2006, and Inesi, 2010).
POWERFUL GUTS 7
Similarly, high power has been shown to increase the exercise of poor manners: high
power subjects ate more greedily and made larger messes in an experiment in which groups of
participants were presented with cookies (Ward & Keltner, 1998). Finally, power leads to more
disinhibited flirting, again demonstrating that power leads to a strong action-orientation, and
decreased vigilance with regard to potential risks and negative consequences (Gonzaga, Keltner,
Londahl, & Smith, 2001).
Consistent with these results, Anderson and Galinsky (2006) also found that when primed
with a high-power mindset, subjects were both less risk-averse in a subsequent negotiation task,
and less likely to perceive the world in general as a threatening environment fraught with
potential risks. High power is generally associated with positive affect, which could conceivably
be responsible for these effects; importantly, however, in these studies power’s effects on risk
perception were not mediated by positive affect, indicating that power may directly decrease
vigilance toward threats, and produce a strong action-orientation regardless of the emotional
context in which it operates.
The Approach/Inhibition Theory of power. The behavioral approach system (BAS) is
characterized by positive affect, greater attention to rewards than to threats and risks, and an
increased tendency toward action. In contrast, the behavioral inhibition system (BIS) is
associated with negative emotions such as fear and anxiety, heightened vigilance to threats and
risks, and behavior that is generally oriented toward avoiding punishment and negative
consequences (Carver & White, 1994). Because power is associated with positive emotion and
pursuit of rewards, and has been found to reduce perceptions of social threats and risks, it is
entirely psychologically consistent with the function of the BAS. Keltner and colleagues (2003)
have therefore proposed engagement of the BAS (and suppression of the BIS) as a single
POWERFUL GUTS 8
mechanism by which many of the empirical findings regarding power can be explained.
According to this Approach/Inhibition theory of power, the primary psychological consequence
of power is that it shifts the equilibrium between the behavioral approach and inhibition systems
in favor of the behavioral approach system, and the observed cognitive, emotional, and
behavioral consequences of power stem directly from that shift (Anderson & Berdahl, 2002;
Keltner, 2003; Galinsky, 2003).
The Approach/Inhibition perspective on power has inspired several lines of research
investigating power’s behavioral consequences, most of which have emphasized the ways in
which higher power heightens reward-focused, action-oriented motives and behaviors. As a
result of this BAS focus, a relative dearth of empirical evidence exists to demonstrate how power
interacts with the experience of threats, losses, and negative emotions (Inesi, 2010). In particular,
mixed (and sometimes outright contradictory) results have been found regarding the effects of
high and low power on the experience and expression of negative affect, depending on which
specific emotions were measured (Berdahl & Martorana, 2006). This apparent divergence in the
effects of power on negative and inhibition-oriented affect highlights the need to more carefully
differentiate between specific negative emotions (e.g., sadness vs. anger) as they relate to the
experience of power.
The Situated Focus Theory of power. While the Approach/Inhibition theory
emphasizes how power affects the dynamic tension between motivational systems, the Situated
Focus theory of power proposes that power influences behavior by affecting basic cognition.
Specifically, it proposes that power increases reliance on experiential information, subjective
internal responses, and visceral states. For example, power increases the extent to which people
are affected by cognitive ease of retrieval - a fleeting subjective experience - when it is brought
POWERFUL GUTS 9
to bear on their judgments (Weick & Guinote, 2008). Additionally, when Guinote (2010)
presented high power subjects with a task in which they were instructed to sample an appealing
and an unappealing food (chocolates and raw radishes, respectively) high-power subjects ate
significantly more of the preferred tasty food and significantly less of the unappealing food than
subjects in a neutral control condition, even though they were instructed that eating a certain
amount of both was required for the task. The conclusion drawn from this research was that
power increases reliance on “bodily information,” meaning that for powerful people, their own
visceral and interoceptive states play a much stronger role in guiding their behavior.
At the same time that power enhances reliance on these primary drivers of cognition,
another aspect of the "situated focus" produced by power is flexible processing: the ability to
selectively attend to information that is task-relevant, and disregard information that is not. For
example, when presented with a visual task for which the ability to ignore contextual information
was necessary in order to succeed, high-power subjects were significantly better at attending to
the focal object and inhibiting attention to distracting peripheral information (Guinote, 2007b).
The Situated Focus theory thus embraces several distinct mechanisms - flexible
processing, goal orientation, and enhanced attention to various subjective experiences and
internal states - through which power affects judgment and behavior. In this regard, the Situated
Focus theory could be considered less parsimonious than the Approach/Inhibition theory;
however, what it lacks in parsimony, it compensates for in offering a potentially greater degree
of subtlety. In particular, since it does not attribute the effects of power to a single motivational
system or regulatory focus, the Situated Focus theory does not predict wholesale dominance of
BAS- over BIS-driven responses among the powerful, and might predict instead that the specific
characteristics and demands of the situation will determine which behavioral orientation and
POWERFUL GUTS 10
regulatory focus will be engaged. Therefore, a primary distinction between the Situated Focus
and Approach/Inhibition theories is that according to the former, BIS-driven emotions and
behavior are entirely within the realm of responses that might conceivably be facilitated by
power, particularly in situations where such responses are directly relevant to the task at hand, or
are grounded in a visceral state.
Power and moral judgment. Power influences moral judgments in several ways. First, it
appears to increase the discrepancy between moral judgments of one’s own actions, and the
actions of others. Lammers, Stapel, and Galinsky (2010) had high-power and control subjects
judge moral violations that were framed either as actions taken by another person, or as actions
hypothetically taken by themselves. They found that when the actions were framed as someone
else’s, the powerful subjects rated them as more wrong than control subjects did and, conversely,
judged them less harshly when the actions were framed as something hypothetically done by the
participants themselves.
In the context of moral dilemmas such as the classic trolley scenario – in which killing
one person is necessary to prevent several others from being killed – power has been found to
increase subjects’ reliance on deontological (i.e., rule-based) judgments while deemphasizing
their consideration of the consequences of an action (Lammers & Stapel, 2009). It has been
suggested that this result is a consequence of the way in which power shifts one’s cognitive focus
toward abstract principles (in this case, moral rules such as “thou shalt not kill”) and away from
situational and contextual details (Smith & Trope, 2006). If that interpretation is correct, the
finding that power increases rule-based moral judgments would be consistent with the
Approach/Inhibition theory. Since BAS activation is associated with decreased vigilance in
processing, power may cause judgments to be driven less by details of the specific scenario
POWERFUL GUTS 11
(including the specific consequences involved), and more by general moral principles, resulting
in moral judgments that are more “rule-based.” While this explanation is certainly plausible, no
direct evidence exists for abstract thinking as a mechanism for the effect, and the Situated Focus
theory offers another possible interpretation. There is evidence from social neuroscience that
deontological moral judgments are driven by a moral “gut response,” meaning that they are the
product of an immediate visceral and emotional response to a behavior, rather than a controlled
cognitive assessment (Greene et al., 2001; 2004). The Situated Focus theory posits that power
increases reliance on bodily information and visceral states in determining behavior and
judgment, and so it is possible that power makes moral judgments more deontological because
deontological judgments follow more immediately from people’s visceral gut-reactions, whereas
the alternative (consequentialist judgments) requires inhibition of those responses (Greene et al.,
2001; 2004).
From these findings, it is clear that power can affect moral judgment, but it is unclear
exactly why or how it does so. Are high-powered people’s moral judgments harsher because they
are more “gut-based,” or are they simply more severe because power makes people feel more
entitled to judge? Further, is this increase in the harshness of moral judgments universal to
judgments of all varieties of moral transgressions, or is it specific to violations of certain moral
codes and norms? In the experiments that follow, I examine the role of disgust in powerful
people’s moral judgments in order to test the Situated Focus theory’s prediction that power
should make people's visceral responses more of a driving force in their moral judgments, in
contrast to the Approach/Inhibition theory’s prediction that, if those visceral states are inhibition-
oriented, power should limit their influence.
POWERFUL GUTS 12
Disgust
Disgust is a key psychological factor in moral judgment, but, as is the case with most
specific negative emotions, its relationship to power remains largely unexplored (Horberg et al,
2009). Recent research has found strong evidence that the disgust response evolved specifically
to promote survival by preventing contamination (Rozin et al, 2008; Oaten, Stevenson & Case,
2009). Because its purpose was to signify the presence of a contamination threat, disgust strongly
facilitates avoidant behavior, and inhibits interaction with the environment. Physiologically
speaking, this fundamentally avoidant function of disgust manifests itself in the activation of
parasympathetic nervous responses, including reduced heart rate, lowered blood pressure, and
slower respiration, all of which serve to inhibit action (Ekman et al., 1983).
Recently, researchers have provided evidence for the evolutionary continuity of disgust
as a response to bodily contaminants and disgust as a response to taboo social behaviors.
Gustatory and moral disgust engage the levator labii muscles in the same way, producing a facial
response that is characteristic of the attempt to eject substances from the oral and nasal openings
(Chapman et al, 2009). This suggests that the disgust that is felt in response to moral violations
traces its origins to the response that guides human beings away from ingesting or inhaling
noxious substances. The implication is that, while disgust almost certainly originated as an alarm
system for the avoidance of biological threats such as disease, spoilage, and poisonous animals,
in the course of more recent human history the disgust response has been coopted by social
perception and judgment systems to cue avoidant responses to non-biological threats as well.
Consistent with this theory of social disgust as an evolved form of oral disgust, research
has shown that, like oral disgust, socio-moral disgust also induces avoidant responses. For
example, people tend to be unwilling to make physical contact with items said to have belonged
POWERFUL GUTS 13
to individuals judged to be deeply immoral (e.g., Nazis or pedophiles). They recoil at the idea of
coming into contact with such socially “contaminated” items, as though those items could
somehow transmit their undesirable associations through physical contact like a biological
contagion (Rozin & Nemeroff, 2002). This social disgust response mimics the way in which
physical disgust signals that a substance presents a contamination risk, and thus inhibits physical
contact.
Disgust is so fundamental to certain moral responses that it has been identified, along
with anger and contempt, as one of the key moral emotions (Gutierrez & Giner Sorolla, 2007;
Rozin, Lowery, Imada & Haidt, 1999). In fact, because it is such a powerful and common
response to certain moral violations, disgust as a reaction to human beings and social behaviors
has even been characterized as “embodied moral judgment” (Haidt, 2003; Schnall, Haidt, Clore
& Jordan, 2008 ). Consistent with this characterization, under conditions of physical disgust the
severity of moral judgments increases (Eskine et al, 2011; Schnall et al, 2008). Importantly, this
effect has been found to hold both for judgments of actions that are themselves generally
considered disgusting (for example, a man engaging in sexual behavior with a chicken carcass),
as well as for moral transgressions like stealing and insulting people, which are not in themselves
physically disgusting (Schnall et. al., 2008).
These results demonstrate that disgust can intensify moral judgments, but there is also
evidence that a feeling of disgust is actually sufficient by itself to cause a moral response.
Wheatley and Haidt (2005) used a hypnotic cue to induce physical disgust, and gave subjects a
neutral vignette describing a person’s behavior. Subjects with hypnotically-induced disgust
interpreted the description as implying immoral behavior and reported feelings of suspicion and
mistrust regarding the person depicted in the vignette, whereas control subjects made no such
POWERFUL GUTS 14
imputations. This phenomenon demonstrates that primary (i.e., physical) disgust can
automatically cue the cultural beliefs, norms, and attitudes that drive moral judgment, thereby
putting people in a state of moral vigilance. In that way, the experience of disgust functions as a
signal that certain people and behaviors are to be literally avoided like the plague.
Conversely, extreme moral disapproval can also elicit primary disgust responses. For
example, people often report feelings of nausea – a core physical disgust response - at the
thought of certain social moral violations, particularly those of a sexual nature (Rozin, Haidt &
McCauley, 2008). In the case of social taboos, disgust not only intensifies and automatically cues
moral judgments, but actually defines those behaviors as immoral. The disgust felt in response to
certain taboo behaviors drives moral judgments of those behaviors so powerfully that disgust is
considered by psychology researchers to be not only a moral emotion, but a “moralizing”
emotion (Pizarro et al, 2011). Since most taboo moral violations are essentially harmless, it is
because we are disgusted by the action that we understand it to be wrong, and thus disgust
“moralizes” what might not otherwise be seen as morally relevant. Further evidence for this
moralizing function of disgust has been found in the context of social issues such as the
legalization of gay marriage. Inbar, Pizarro, Knobe & Bloom (2009) found that a trait level
propensity to experience disgust strongly predicted intuitive moral disapproval of gay
individuals, indicating that it may be a gut-level disgust response to homosexuality that drives
people to view it in a moral light.
Power and Disgust
In spite of the proliferation of separate lines of research investigating the psychological
characteristics and consequences of power and disgust, neither the relationship between them,
nor the consequences of their interaction for moral judgments has been explored directly.
POWERFUL GUTS 15
Although the psychology literature generally conceives of disgust primarily as a state of
avoidance and inhibition, throughout the course of human history, disgust has been used to incite
aggression and violence, which are approach-oriented responses. For example, the propaganda
surrounding the 1994 Rwandan genocide famously referred to members of the Tutsi minority as
“cockroaches” in order to galvanize civilians of the Hutu majority to commit acts of heinous
violence against their Tutsi neighbors, calling for the “extermination” of these “contaminated
parasites” (Thompson, 2007). As another harrowing example, a dominant theme in Nazi
propaganda films was likening Jewish people to diseased rodents, again calling for their
extermination. A particular emphasis on the disgust-focused idea that these “parasites” were
carriers of disease was further underscored by graphic disgust-driven animations (Barsam, 1992).
While the horrific goal in both historical cases was to eliminate the perceived
"contaminant" from society, in such instances disgust seems to have propelled people toward that
ultimately avoidant goal mainly by way of an approach-based response (ie, aggression – Carver,
2004; Carver & Harmon-Jones, 2009). It thus appears that disgust is capable of inspiring
members of a more powerful, socially dominant group not to avoid, but to seek out and take
action against groups of lower status. Given the particular power dynamic that is characteristic of
these instances of genocide, perhaps there is something about the operation of disgust
specifically in the context of power that transforms an ordinarily avoidant response into an action
orientation. The Approach/Inhibition and Situated Focus theories of power lead to competing
predictions as to how this transformation might take place, and what the specific psychological
relationship between disgust and power might be.
The Approach/Inhibition theory predicts that an acute sense of power should attenuate
feelings of disgust because disgust is an inhibitory response, and power suppresses the BIS. In
POWERFUL GUTS 16
accordance with this prediction, individuals perceiving themselves as powerful exhibit decreased
concern about encountering threats and aversive stimuli, even with regard to events that are
beyond their control – for example, encountering a poisonous snake or experiencing turbulence
on a plane (Anderson & Galinsky, 2006). These results suggest that perhaps high power
individuals will find actual encounters with disgust-eliciting stimuli less threatening, and thus be
“immunized” against the actual experience of disgust in the same way they seem to be buffered
against concern about the possibility of negative experiences. This immunizing effect of power
might then make it possible for individuals who are made to perceive something as
“contaminated” (ie, a cockroach or a rodent) to seek it out for destruction, rather than to avoid it.
By contrast, according to the Situated Focus theory the sense of power is defined not by
the BAS, but by an increased awareness of (and responsiveness to) one’s own subjective
experiences, including bodily states such as hunger (Guinote, 2010; Weick & Guinote, 2008).
This increased reliance on embodied information would be expected to augment the influence of
feelings like disgust, causing powerful people to be more likely to render judgments that reflect
that influence. Because disgust is a powerful driver of moral judgments, an acute feeling of
disgust amongst members of a socially dominant group toward members of an outgroup might
intensify moral contempt toward that outgroup, thus inspiring a stronger motivation to take
action against them.
Power, Disgust, and Moral Judgment
Because disgust is known to influence moral judgments (by increasing their severity),
measuring the extent to which power either suppresses or augments this influence offers a direct
test of how power and disgust interact psychologically. Both the Approach/Inhibition and
Situated Focus theories could be considered consistent with previous research showing that
POWERFUL GUTS 17
power by itself makes moral judgments harsher, but the two theories diverge when it comes to
how power should influence the way in which an avoidant visceral state (such as disgust) affects
moral judgment.
The Approach/Inhibition theory proposes that power suppresses BIS responses, and so its
prediction with regard to disgust is fairly straightforward: power should attenuate the visceral
experience of disgust, thus rendering it less of an influence on powerful peoples’ judgments and
behavior. We would expect, therefore, that high power subjects would report lower disgust
sensitivity, and also that exposing them to disgust would have less influence on their moral
judgments. The Situated Focus theory would predict that since disgust is a subjective state with a
strong visceral component, power should augment the extent to which it affects judgment and
behavior because powerful people are more influenced by such “experiential information.”
Table1 (below) offers a summary of these contrasting hypothesized mechanisms, and the
predictions they make for how power will interact with disgust.
Table 1.
Predicted interactions between power and disgust derived from two major theories.
Theory
Proposed
Mechanism
Predicted Outcome of
Power/Disgust Interaction
Situated Focus Theory
(Guinote, 2008)
Increased responsiveness to
"bodily information"
Power will increase the extent
to which disgust influences
judgment
Approach/Inhibition Theory
(Keltner et al, 2003)
Enhancement of BAS,
suppression of BIS
Power will attenuate sensitivity
to disgust, rendering it less
influential in judgment
POWERFUL GUTS 18
The Current Research
The four studies presented here explore the competing hypotheses that powerful people
will be more likely (Situated Focus Theory) versus less likely (Approach/Inhibition theory) to be
influenced by disgust. In Study 1, I assess the relationship between people's trait level sense of
power and sensitivity to disgust. Study 2 investigates the effects of power on judgments of
disgusting and non-disgusting moral transgressions in order to test which of the two theories
most accurately predicts the interaction between power and disgust in the context of moral
judgment. Lastly, Studies 3 and 4 seek support for power’s reduction of sensitivity to visceral
disgust as a mechanism for the effects observed in Study 2. On the whole, the results of all four
studies support the Approach/Inhibition Theory of power by demonstrating that power acts as a
buffer against the actual subjective experience of disgust.
Study 1
In order to assess the naturally-occurring relationship between disgust and power, I
assessed individual differences in participants’ perceptions of their own personal power in their
day-to-day lives, and their general sensitivity to disgust. High power has been linked
experimentally to decreased threat perception, and at the trait level to the experience of more
approach-oriented emotions, whereas lower power (operationalized as low SES) has been shown
to relate to increased perception of threats, and mistrust of others (Mirowski & Ross, 1983;
Anderson & Galinsky, 2006; Anderson & Keltner, 2000). Disgust has been characterized as an
alarm system responding to threats, and is therefore generally understood to engage the
behavioral inhibition system. If the Approach/Inhibition theory is an accurate psychological
model of power, then individuals with a greater generalized sense of power in their everyday
POWERFUL GUTS 19
lives should be less sensitive to disgust because of their relatively lower threat vigilance, and
strong approach orientation. The Situated Focus theory, on the other hand, would not predict a
stable relationship between the everyday experience of power and sensitivity to disgust, because
from that theoretical perspective power operates psychologically not through a shift in
motivational systems, but through enhanced responsiveness to internal subjective states, and
increased ability to selectively attend to situationally-relevant information.
Method
Participants and procedure. Participants were 2,013 adults (36% female; mean age 42)
with active accounts on YourMorals.org who opted to complete both the Disgust Scale and the
Generalized Sense of Power scale. The two scales were administered separately and were
selected by participants from a list of ~15 featured scales on the YourMorals.org home page.
Power measure. The Generalized Sense of Power scale (Anderson & Galinsky, 2006)
measures individuals’ perceptions of how much power they tend to have in the course of their
day-to-day lives and relationships. Eight items assess participants’ beliefs about their ability to
influence others’ behavior, and the extent to which they feel that they exercise power in the
course of their daily lives. Participants rated on a scale of 1 (Strongly Disagree) to 5 (Strongly
Agree) their level of agreement with statements such as “If I want to, I get to make the
decisions,” and “I can get others to do what I want” (M = 3.3, SD = .74). Internal consistency of
the scale was high, α = .88 (individual items can be found in the appendix).
Disgust measure. The Disgust Scale was developed as a paper-and-pencil measure of
disgust sensitivity as a stable individual difference (Haidt, McCauley & Rozin, 1994). In the first
block of 14 items, participants rate on a scale of 0 to 4 the degree to which certain statements
POWERFUL GUTS 20
related to the experience of disgust are true of them
1
. Examples of items include “under certain
circumstances, I might be willing to try eating monkey meat” and “I never let any part of my
body touch the toilet seat in a public restroom.” In the second block of questions, again on a
scale of 0-4, subjects are asked to rate how disgusting they consider various experiences to be
(e.g., seeing mangled bodies after a car accident or encountering the smell of urine while walking
in a public place). In previous research, this scale was a strong predictor of the ability (or
inability) to tolerate disgust-inducing experiences such as touching cockroaches, or eating
substances that resemble fecal matter, and is widely considered to be a reliable measure of how
susceptible people are to actual feelings of disgust (Rozin, 1999).
The revised version of the scale consists of 28 items belonging to three subscales (Core
Disgust, Animal Reminder Disgust, and Contamination-Based Disgust) The two blocks of items
do not correspond directly to the subscales – items from each of the three subscales are found in
both blocks (Haidt, McCauley, & Rozin, 1994, modified by Olatunji et al., 2007). When the two
blocks of items were combined, the scale was reliable overall (alpha = .77), and so the full scale
was used as a single measure of disgust sensitivity (M=1.6, SD = .6).
Results
As predicted by the Approach/Inhibition theory, there was a negative relationship
between the Generalized Sense of Power Scale and sensitivity to disgust (r = -.13, p < .001).
Replicating previously demonstrated effects, women and conservatives were higher on
sensitivity to disgust than men and liberals (respectively), yielding significant correlations
between disgust sensitivity and gender (females more disgust sensitive; r=.23) and politics
(conservatives more disgust sensitive; r = .15). When controlling for both politics and gender,
the correlation between disgust sensitivity and sense of power remained (r = -.16, p < .001).
1
In this research, the scale was administered with response options numbered 1-5 (rather than 0-4)
POWERFUL GUTS 21
Discussion. Keltner and colleagues (2003) have argued that power is associated with
BAS activation because power – regardless of whether it is derived from a particular role (e.g.,
an occupation) or from broader social factors such as majority status or high SES – tends to be
associated with operating in stable, reward-rich environments. In such environments, there is
little need or motivation to monitor threats. If Keltner et al are correct that power in everyday life
is associated with greater access to (and control of) resources and less exposure to threat and
uncertainty, it is reasonable to expect that this could result in a generalized insensitivity to
threats. The Approach/Inhibition theory of power thus makes a decisive prediction about trait-
level power and disgust: on the whole, powerful people should develop a tendency toward less
dramatic disgust responses than individuals who experience higher levels of threat in their day to
day lives (ie, those with less power).
The results of Study 1 support this aspect of the Approach/Inhibition theory, because they
suggest that an elevated chronic sense of power may be associated with a general suppression of
BIS-driven responses such as disgust. Since disgust is an inhibitory response to threatening
stimuli, the negative relationship demonstrated in this study between the propensity to
experience disgust and the generalized sense of power is suggestive of an elevated sense of
invulnerability on the part of the powerful.
In regard to the Situated Focus Theory the prediction is not as clear, since powerful
people are said to “go with their gut,” but the theory does not specify what propensities the guts
of the powerful might have. If anything, the Situated Focus Theory might predict that the
contextually situated (and therefore flexible) whims of the powerful would result in relatively
unstable relationships between power and trait measures of gut level propensities such as disgust.
In that sense, the mere existence of a significant relationship between power and disgust
POWERFUL GUTS 22
sensitivity could be viewed as somewhat inconsistent with (though by no means entirely
disconfirmatory of) the Situated Focus Theory’s characterization of power. Studies 2 through 4
seek more direct experimental evidence to adjudicate between the two theories.
Study 2
Study 1 suggests that people who feel more powerful in their everyday lives are
somewhat less prone to experiencing disgust. This result supports the Approach/Inhibition
theory’s claim that powerful people exhibit less inhibition and are less easily made to feel
threatened. However, because Study 1 is correlational and relies on self-report, it is not clear
whether a greater sense of power is associated with less sensitivity to disgust because power
actually suppresses disgust, or because powerful people simply like to think of themselves as not
being easily disgusted, regardless of whether or not they actually are. Additionally, the
possibility that unidentified intervening variables are actually responsible for the relationship
demonstrated in Study 1cannot be ruled out. The purpose of Study 2, therefore, is to investigate
in a controlled experimental paradigm what happens when powerful people actually encounter
disgust-eliciting stimuli.
In order to avoid using self-report to measure the sensitivity to disgust, Study 2 measures
the influence of disgust on judgment. Feelings of disgust induced by unpleasant stimuli in the
physical environment have been shown to increase the severity of moral judgments, even though
the disgust is completely incidental to the actual behaviors being judged (Schnall et al, 2008).
Disgust also influences moral judgments insofar as it is the driving force behind moral judgments
of taboo behaviors. Study 2 takes advantage of both phenomena in order to test the
Approach/Inhibition and Situated Focus theories’ competing predictions (outlined below, and in
POWERFUL GUTS 23
Table 1, above) regarding the effects of power on individuals’ attention and sensitivity to
disgust-eliciting stimuli.
Integral Disgust.
The fact that they elicit disgust is a defining characteristic of certain moral violations,
particularly those related to bodily functions such as taboo sexual behaviors (Haidt, Rozin,
McCauley & Imada, 1997). I therefore wanted to determine whether power would affect the
severity of moral judgments for taboo violations (to which disgust is integral) relative to non-
taboo violations. To that end, several of the DV’s in this study involve moral violations that are
considered harmless, but are nonetheless generally judged to be immoral because they are found
to be disgusting (Wheatley & Haidt, 2005). For example, one vignette described a brother and
sister who decided to begin an incestuous relationship. The vignette specified that both of the
siblings found the relationship to be very emotionally rewarding, and that they were careful to
use birth control, so no harmful consequences could be thought to have resulted from their
behavior. In spite of its harmlessness, however, this behavior is generally judged to be morally
wrong because it elicits strong – even visceral – feelings of disgust.
Incidental Disgust
For high-power subjects, the Approach/Inhibition theory makes two relatively
straightforward predictions regarding incidental disgust. First, since power should minimize
vigilance to the surrounding environment and should suppress inhibitory responses, a disgusting
environment should have less of an effect on moral judgments by high power subjects. By
contrast, a key component of the Situated Focus theory is that powerful people are particularly
attuned to “bodily information,” and therefore are more prone than others to act in accordance
with their subjective states (Guinote, 2007b). Because moral judgments are generally driven by
POWERFUL GUTS 24
subjective states (rather than by “cold” cognitive assessments of consequences), the Situated
Focus Theory predicts that power should enhance the influence of environmentally induced
incidental disgust on moral judgments. The same principle would apply to taboo versus non-
taboo judgments: since the disgust response drives judgments of the former to a greater extent
than the later, if power enhances people’s responsiveness to the disgusting content of taboo
violations we should see an increase in the harshness of those moral judgments in particular.
Method
Participants and design. Subjects were 151 (F = 114, M = 37) undergraduates at the
University of Southern California who participated in exchange for class credit. They were told
that they would be participating in a study investigating descriptive writing styles and moral
attitudes. Participants came to the lab one at a time to complete the experiment, and were
randomly assigned to one of four conditions in a 2x2 design crossing power (High Power vs.
Neutral) with incidental disgust - a physical environment that was either clean (control
condition) or disgusting. Further, integral disgust (that is, disgust that is integral and relevant to
the moral violations themselves) was manipulated within-subjects
Disgust manipulation. Upon arriving at the lab, subjects were led by the experimenter
to one of two rooms. In the Disgust condition, the room in which the study took place was
extremely cluttered and messy. Subjects were seated at a desk with sticky, mysterious substances
smeared across its surface, in a chair which also had greasy smears and stains on it. A cup with
residue beginning to grow mold sat on the desk immediately in front of the participant, and off to
the side was an offensive-smelling trash can containing prominently visible used band-aids with
the appearance of having dried blood on them (simulated with soy sauce). There were also
several crumpled tissues with encrusted fake mucous scattered on the desk and floor. Finally,
POWERFUL GUTS 25
when administering the first task (a writing exercise), the experimenter handed subjects in the
Disgust condition a pen which had been clearly been chewed on. Subjects in the Control
condition completed the experiment in a clean room, and were handed a clean (unchewed) pen
with which to complete the experimental tasks.
Power manipulation. After being situated in either the Disgust or Control rooms,
subjects were given the purported “descriptive writing task,” which was actually a widely used
power priming task (Galinsky, Gruenfeld, & Magee, 2003). Subjects in the High Power
condition were instructed to recall and describe in detail an incident in which they had power
over others. Power was defined for them as the ability to evaluate others, administer rewards and
punishments, or control others’ behavior or outcomes. Participants in the control (Neutral)
condition were asked to recall and describe what they did that morning. In both conditions,
participants were given 5 minutes to write their responses to the prompt, and were instructed to
give as much detail about the topic as possible.
Previous research has demonstrated that the behavioral results of power are mediated by
subjective feelings of power, and so in the high power condition participants were specifically
asked to describe as vividly as possible what it felt like to have and exercise power (Anderson &
Berdhal, 2002).
Dependent Measures. After being primed with power (or completing the neutral writing
task) participants made a series of moral judgments, and completed a debriefing questionnaire
that probed their beliefs about the purpose of the experiment (none expressed suspicion
regarding the role of disgust in the study). Lastly, they were given a questionnaire that contained
a manipulation check for disgust.
POWERFUL GUTS 26
Moral judgments. Moral judgments were elicited on a scale from 0 (Totally Morally
Acceptable) to 9 (The Worst Possible Moral Violation) in response to a series of nine vignettes
(administered in random order) describing actions commonly held to be moral transgressions.
The vignettes were adapted from Schnall and colleagues’ (2008) previous work demonstrating
the effects of disgust on the severity of moral judgments. They encompassed a broad range of
actions, from relatively mundane moral violations (e.g., lying on a resume), to more dramatic
ones like resorting to cannibalism in order to survive after a plane crash. Three of the nine
vignettes described harmless taboo violations.
Disgust manipulation check. Lastly, participants were given a questionnaire that was
described to them as an evaluation being administered by the Psychology Department to all study
participants in order to find out about their experience with the lab. It included several distracter
items asking subjects to rate how organized and friendly the experimenter was, as well as items
that asked subjects to rate how clean or disgusting they found the room in which they completed
the study. In order to encourage honest responses, participants were told that their evaluations
would be confidential, and were given an envelope in which to seal their evaluation form when
completed. Lastly, in order to further promote perceptions of confidentiality, subjects were
instructed to drop off their sealed, anonymous evaluation forms in a locked box in the front
office rather than giving them back to the experimenter. The experimenters would then retrieve
the evaluation from the box and record the data after the participants had left the lab.
Results
While the disgusting room was rated by participants in both power conditions as
significantly messier and more disgusting than the clean room (p < .001), there was no effect of
the disgusting environment on moral judgment severity in either the High Power condition or the
POWERFUL GUTS 27
Power-Neutral (control) condition. Thus, the Power-Neutral condition failed to replicate
previously reported disgust effects on moral judgments, indicating that, in spite of producing
significantly different disgust ratings, the disgust manipulation may not have elicited sufficient
visceral disgust to affect moral judgments. Since the disgust manipulation was ineffective
overall, no interaction was found between power and incidental disgust, and thus the differential
effects of incidental physical disgust on high power versus control subjects cannot be ascertained
from these data.
There was, however, a strong main effect of power such that high power subjects made
judgments that were significantly less harsh than subjects in the control condition (t = 2.3, df =
152, p = .02), a surprising result that contradicts prior research showing that power generally
enhances the severity of moral judgments (Lammers, Stapel, & Galinsky, 2010). Further
analyses showed that this main effect of power on moral judgments was driven by the predicted
interaction between power (high vs. neutral) and integral disgust (taboo vs. non-taboo
judgments). For the taboo judgments, High Power subjects’ moral judgments (M = 6.4, SD =
1.7) were significantly less harsh than those of subjects in the control condition (M = 7.2, SD =
1.9), t(152) = 2.6, p = .009. For moral violations that did not involve disgust, however, there was
no significant difference between high power and control subjects (p = .719). A repeated-
measures ANOVA confirmed the within-subjects interaction, F(1, 152) = 6.41; p = .012.
Importantly, this interaction did not depend on the condition of the room (disgusting vs.
clean), which suggests that it truly reflects differences in High Power and Control subjects’
responses to the disgusting content of the moral vignettes.
POWERFUL GUTS 28
Figure 1. Mean value of moral judgments (0 = Totally Morally Acceptable, 9 = The Worst Imaginable Moral
Violation) as a function of judgment type for subjects in High-Power and Power-Neutral conditions.
Discussion
Because the disgusting room did not significantly affect moral judgments in either
condition, this study was inconclusive with regard to the effect of power on sensitivity to
incidental physical disgust. The absence of an effect constitutes a failure to replicate previously
reported effects of a disgusting physical environment on moral judgments, and therefore suggests
insufficient strength of implementation in this manipulation.
While incidental physical disgust was not a factor in moral judgments (or in the effects of
power on moral judgments), the within-subjects interaction of power and disgust-based moral
violations provides further evidence of the buffering effect of power that is predicted by the
Approach/Inhibition theory, and was suggested by the results of Study 1. The moral violations
for which high-power subjects were less severe in their judgments were those that involve no
actual harm, and whose perceived immorality is cued primarily by the feelings of disgust that
3
4
5
6
7
8
Non-Taboo Judgments Disgusting Taboo
Judgments
Mean Moral Judgments
Power
Neutral Control
POWERFUL GUTS 29
they elicit. The results of this study suggest that power causes those actions to be perceived as
less wrong because it attenuates that feeling of disgust, which is entirely consistent with the BIS
suppression predicted by the Approach/Inhibition theory.
At the same time, though, the Situated Focus theory could also account for this result as
being a consequence not of BIS suppression, but of high-power subjects’ flexible cognitive
processing (the ability to selectively attend to relevant information, and disregard extraneous
inputs). Specifically, it could be argued that high power subjects are less harsh on disgust
violations not because they are less disgusted by them (as the Approach/Inhibition theory would
suggest), but because they are able to disregard their feelings of disgust as being irrelevant to
whether or not these actions are immoral. High power subjects may focus instead on other
(arguably more relevant) moral considerations, such as the actions’ lack of harmful
consequences. Because both a situated focus and enhanced BAS engagement offer plausible
mechanisms for this effect, these data are ultimately inconclusive regarding the two competing
theories. Regardless of which theory is correct (whether it is because disgust is actually felt less,
or because it is felt and discounted), Study 2 demonstrates that a powerful mindset makes disgust
less of an influence on moral judgments.
Study 3
The results of Study 1 suggest that the everyday experience of power may be associated
with decreased disgust sensitivity at a trait level. In Study 2, high power subjects were less harsh
in their judgments of disgust-based moral transgressions. Taken together, these results suggest
that effects of power on disgust-based moral judgments may be explained by power suppressing
the actual experience of disgust. Study 3 tests this underlying mechanism directly by
manipulating power, and using the Disgust Scale to measure subjects’ propensity for disgust
POWERFUL GUTS 30
while they are experiencing an elevated sense of power. I hypothesized that if (as the
Approach/Inhibition theory would predict) attenuated disgust is actually the mechanism for the
results of Study 2, then in Study 3, when power is manipulated, high-power subjects should
report less sensitivity to disgust than subjects in a neutral control group.
Participants and Procedure
205 USC undergraduates participated in exchange for course credit. They completed the
experiment online via Qualtrics.com, where they were randomly assigned to either a High Power
or Neutral condition. They then completed the same widely-used experiential recall task that was
used in Study 2 (Anderson & Galinsky, 2006). After being primed with power (or completing the
neutral writing task) participants completed the Disgust Scale - Revised (DS-R), also used in
Study 1 (Haidt, McCauley, & Rozin, 1994, modified by Olatunji et al., 2008). Of the N = 205
students who navigated to the study webpage, twenty seven had to be dropped because they
failed to complete some portion of the study, or failed the attention check items that are built into
the DS-R This left a total N = 85 subjects in the High Power condition, and N = 93 subjects in
the Neutral condition.
Results and Discussion
In Part 1 of the 2-part scale (the first block of 14 items), high power subjects (M = 3.3,
SD = .57) were significantly less disgust-sensitive than those in the control condition (M = 3.5,
SD = .54), t (176) = 2.6, p = .01. However, in the second part of the scale, there was no
significant difference between power conditions (p = .4).
POWERFUL GUTS 31
Fig. 2. Mean scores on the Disgust Scale (Parts 1 and 2) as a function of experimental condition. Only Part 1
scores differed significantly (p = .01).
While this difference in the effects of power on the two parts of the scale was not
expected, I reasoned that perhaps it is a result of the fact that the two parts of the scale ask
different types of questions, and use a different response format (for a full list of items, see the
Appendix). It is possible that these differences are tapping into subtly different aspects of disgust
sensitivity, which are, in turn, related differently to power.
In Part 1, subjects rate their agreement or disagreement with first-person statements
describing aversive responses to a variety of experiences that might be considered disgusting. In
Part 2 they rate various stimuli and experiences on a scale from 1 (Not disgusting at all) to 5
(Extremely disgusting). Differences between power conditions in the first part of the survey may
have been driven by powerful subjects’ resistance to attributing vulnerable, inhibitory responses
2.8
2.9
3
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5
3.6
3.7
Disgust Scale Part 1 Disgust Scale Part 2
Mean Disgust Scale Scores
Control
High Power
POWERFUL GUTS 32
to themselves, whereas in Part 2 of the survey, they are no less willing than control subjects to
identify an object or an experience as objectively disgusting.
2
The strength of this effect is further underscored by the fact that the DS-R was conceived
and validated as a measure of a stable personality trait (Haidt, McCauley & Rozin, 1994). Thus
for power to be able to produce substantial movement on this instrument suggests a strong
relationship between power and disgust sensitivity. Interestingly, however, the attenuation of
disgust sensitivity was observed only in the part of the Disgust Scale that utilizes an “Agree-
Disagree” response format for items framed as first person statements about aversive responses
to various stimuli, suggesting that statements about one’s own disgust responses are affected
differently by power than statements that merely categorize objects and experiences as
“disgusting.” Though caution is appropriate in interpreting any unexpected result, perhaps this
selectivity can tell us something more about the psychological dynamics of power. In Study 4, I
follow up on this possibility by testing explicitly the effects of power on expressions of one’s
own feelings of disgust versus identification of other things as disgusting.
Study 4
While its two parts have fairly distinct characteristics, the Disgust Scale is not
specifically designed to test a difference between one’s own feelings of vulnerability to versus
outward identification of disgust. Additionally, the difference between power’s effects on the
two parts of the scale was not predicted. Thus, further investigation was needed in order to
explore whether this distinction was actually responsible for the fact that power reduced scores
on the DS-R1, but not on the DSR-2. Study 4 is a conceptual replication of this effect in a more
2
These data are an aggregation of two samples. The first sample (N =89) was given the Disgust Scale in a fixed
order (Part 1 first). The second sample (N = 116) was administered the study with the order of the two parts
counterbalanced. The pattern of results in each of the samples was the same as that of the results in the combined
sample.
POWERFUL GUTS 33
controlled experimental design, using a novel power manipulation as well as novel measures of
each of the two constructs that appeared to emerge in Study 3.
Method
Participants and design. Subjects in this study were 110 adults recruited from
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, a website where volunteers are compensated with small amounts of
money for performing tasks like the ones used in this experiment (Buhrmester, Kwang &
Gosling, 2011). Subjects were randomly assigned to one of four conditions in a 2 (power: high or
neutral) x 2 (disgust: subjective feelings or outward judgments) between-subjects design. The
two disgust conditions consisted of two separate sets of disgust DVs (described in detail below),
one of which measured subjects’ ratings of their own visceral disgust responses, while the other
measured ratings of the extent to which subjects considered various stimuli to be disgusting.
Power manipulation. Because this study was conducted online with mTurk workers, in
order to effectively manipulate power I developed a novel task that would have face-validity in
that particular setting. The definition of power in social psychology is often articulated in terms
of two major components: judging others and determining their access to desired resources.
Therefore, this task was designed to tap both of these aspects explicitly by putting participants in
a position to both judge the work of others, and to determine who would receive bonus money.
Participants were told that the study was a “consumer rating task” (a typical task for
mTurk workers) accompanied by a “personality survey.” Upon entering the survey website,
subjects in the power condition were told that they would be rating different slogans for
commercial products. They were also told that these slogans had been generated by other mTurk
workers, who had been asked to come up with slogans for these products with the incentive that
the ones rated most highly would earn a monetary bonus for its author.
POWERFUL GUTS 34
In order to further accentuate the sense of power, and to make participants feel that this
power was legitimate, I limited participation in this study to mTurk workers with especially high
ratings on the site and told them as part of the manipulation that they had been selected to be
“evaluators” because of their excellent ratings. As evaluators, they would be shown four
randomly selected slogans produced by these other mTurk workers, and would rank them from
best to worst, with the one they ranked highest being the one that would earn bonus money for its
author (in reality, all of them saw the same four slogans, which I myself had written). Lastly,
they were told that since their task required a higher mTurk rating, they were being paid twice as
much as the slogan writers. This was done for the purpose of further instilling a sense of
legitimacy and superiority over the people whose work they were judging, and whose outcomes
(or “access to resources”) they would be determining.
Subjects in the control condition were given the exact same task, but it was framed
instead as simply reading a few slogans and reporting which one was their favorite. These
slogans were not said to have been generated by other mTurk workers, so there was no element
of judging others, or of determining others’ access to resources.
Power Manipulation Pilot Test. Because I was using a novel manipulation, I piloted
tested it for its effectiveness. A sample of 185 mTurk workers were randomly assigned to
complete one of the two tasks described above, and were then given a filler task. The subjective
sense of power is known to be a crucial component of the psychological effects of situational
power so after completing the filler task, subjects reported on a 7-point Likert scale how much
power they actually felt they had over others in the consumer rating task (Anderson & Berdahl,
2002). The results showed that the manipulation was indeed effective in inducing a sense of
POWERFUL GUTS 35
power, with subjects who completed the power manipulation scoring significantly higher than
subjects in the control task (t= 6.2 df = 183, p < .001).
Dependent measures. In the main study, after completing either the power or neutral
task subjects completed one of two dependent measures designed to tap into two different ways
of responding to disgust-eliciting stimuli. Because no measure currently exists to differentiate
expressions of a visceral disgust response from attributions of the characteristic “disgusting” to
external targets of judgment, it was also necessary to create a novel dependent measure to
capture these two hypothesized dimensions of disgust. Further, it is also possible that the effect
of power on the two parts of the disgust scale observed in Study 3 was a result of the specific
content of the items. For example, perhaps disgust only affected the two parts differently because
overall scores on Part 1 were higher than on Part 2, and thus there was more room for downward
movement on the latter than on the former. Therefore it was important to measure these two
constructs while controlling for the specific content of the items.
The two dependent measures created to do this were administered between subjects, such
that each subject completed only one of the two measures (thus creating a 2x2 design crossing
two levels of power with the two hypothesized aspects of the disgust response - hereafter
referred to as Subjective Disgust and Disgust Attribution).
In order to capture the expression of Subjective Disgust, five items were written as first
person statements, and subjects were instructed to rate their level of agreement with each
statement on a 7-point scale from “Not at all true” to “Very true.” The items described visceral
disgust responses to a range of stimuli, most of which referred to relatively mundane everyday
experiences (eg, “If I was at a restaurant, and I accidentally touched a wad of chewing gum
under the table with my bare hand, I would lose my appetite”). The Disgust Attribution measure
POWERFUL GUTS 36
consisted of five items in which the same content was presented in the form of statements about
an external object or behavior (eg, “It is just disgusting to stick wads of chewing gum under
tables, and on various other surfaces in public places”). Responses to these items were elicited on
a 7-point scale from “Strongly Agree” to “Strongly Disagree.”
Figure 3. Mean scores for each of the two dimensions of disgust (administered between subjects) as a function
of power condition.
Results
As predicted, in this experiment power attenuated expressions of Subjective Disgust,
t(62) = 3.03, p = .004. At the same time, as in Study 3, it did not significantly affect Disgust
Attributions. These results confirm that thinking something is disgusting may not perfectly
coincide with feeling disgusted by it. Certainly, as Rozin (1999) has demonstrated, both are
relevant to the overall construct of trait-level disgust sensitivity; however, as can be seen here,
they can also be manipulated independently of one another by situational factors. Insofar as the
attribution of disgust as a characteristic can have a pejorative connotation, it is not surprising that
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
Disgust Attributions Subjective Disgust
Mean Scores on Disgust Measures
Control
Power
POWERFUL GUTS 37
although power decreased subjective disgust in this experiment, it also appears to have
marginally (p < .1) increased disgust attributions (see Lammers et al, 2010 for similar results).
Discussion
The results of Study 4 have important implications for interpreting the results of the
preceding studies. The difference in power’s effects on my measures of disgust attributions
versus subjective disgust suggests that these are in fact two separable dimensions, and that power
affects only the latter. This suggests that power shapes the disgust reaction along the lines of “X
is disgusting, but I don’t feel disgusted by it.” This is entirely consistent with the results of Study
3, in which a similar distinction along these same lines emerged in the effects of power on the
Disgust Scale. Teasing apart these two aspects of disgust reveals that power buffers specifically
against gut-level disgust, which can account for the results of Study 2: when individuals do not
feel as disgusted by a taboo violation, they do not judge it as harshly, regardless of whether or
not they would identify that violation as “being disgusting.” In particular, the implications for
Study 2 are of interest because they imply that, as Haidt and colleagues have suggested, moral
evaluations of taboo violations are in fact driven primarily by a gut disgust response – that
“grossed-out” feeling that you get when you see, touch, hear, or even merely think about the
things that activate our evolved alarm system for contamination threats (Haidt, 2012; Schnall et
al, 2008). When this response is attenuated by power, the result is judgments that are
significantly less harsh.
On the whole, these results support the Approach/Inhibition theory’s prediction that
power should tend to nullify the avoidant effects of disgust, without necessarily affecting the
extent to which an individual will label something as disgusting. They are also consistent with
the theory that our moralization of taboo violations is grounded in our evolved disgust responses
POWERFUL GUTS 38
to maladaptive behaviors, particularly ones that could expose our bodies to contamination (Oaten
et al, 2008; Haidt et al, 1997).
General Discussion
Overview and Implications
In four studies, power proved antagonistic to the disgust response. At the trait level, a
generalized sense of personal power is negatively related to disgust sensitivity. This is consistent
with the Approach Theory of power, which holds that power tends to be associated with security
and access to resources, and therefore also with decreased vigilance and a relatively low
sensitivity to threats. When situational power is brought to bear on moral judgments, it
selectively decreases the severity of judgments made about harmless, disgusting taboo violations,
while having no effect on judgments of violations that do not involve disgust. The mechanism
for this effect is first revealed in Study 3: power directly reduced self-reported disgust sensitivity
(as measured by the Part 1 of the Disgust Scale – Revised).
Interestingly, an unexpected difference arose in that experiment: power reduced disgust
sensitivity scores on Part 1 of the scale (in which subjects make first-person statements about
their own subjective disgust responses), but not on Part 2, which requires subjects to attribute (or
not) the quality “disgusting” to various objects and experiences. Study 4 conceptually replicates
this effect. Power affects self-reported susceptibility to subjective feelings of disgust in response
to various stimuli, but does not affect the extent to which individuals will attribute the
characteristic “disgusting” to those same stimuli. Together, the results of Studies 3 and 4 are
particularly enlightening with regard to Study 2, in which power selectively reduced the severity
of moral judgments only for harmless, disgusting taboo violations. If judgments of such actions
are driven primarily by actual feelings of visceral disgust (e.g., Schnall et al, 2008), then it stands
POWERFUL GUTS 39
to reason that anything that dampens those feelings should reduce the severity of those
judgments, which is exactly what was observed when subjects were put in a high-power mindset.
The consistency with which power reduces the experience (and thus the effects) of
disgust in these experiments lends strong support to the Approach/Inhibition Theory of power.
Shifting the balance between the BAS and BIS in favor of the BAS should tend to reduce
avoidant responses. The fact that power does this in the case of disgust, which is a particularly
powerful avoidant response, therefore affirms the conceptual framework articulated by Keltner
and colleagues (2003). It is also a testament to the psychological power of power (so to speak)
that something as simple as determining who will receive $.30 (as in Study 4) can affect
individuals’ subjective experiences in other domains (i.e., disgust).
While the Approach/Inhibition Theory of power is directly supported and the Situated
Focus theory is not, these studies nonetheless leave open the possibility that the two theories
could actually be compatible. Power creates an approach barrier to avoidant emotional responses.
Once that barrier is overcome, though, it is entirely possible that an enhanced attention to bodily
states derived from a power-induced situated focus could take over as the more important
psychological determinant of judgment and behavior. The Approach/Inhibition theory appears to
be correct about the immediate effects of power on basic motivational systems. However, those
effects surely are not entirely invincible. It is even possible (though no direct evidence is
provided here) that once the buffering effects of power are overcome, and disgust is actually felt
by individuals in a powerful mindset, such power may indeed exaggerate the consequences of
that subjectively felt disgust. If this is the case, then the two theories provide complementary
accounts of two important aspects of a rich and complex psychological phenomenon.
POWERFUL GUTS 40
In demonstrating these effects of power on disgust (and, in turn, on judgments), this
research builds on the current literature by creating and validating a novel power manipulation
(with high ecological validity in the widely-used domain of mTurk), and by further elaborating
the psychological mechanisms underlying the subjective sense of power. In addition, this
research contributes novel insight into (and measures of) two previously undistinguished
dimensions of the disgust response. Specifically, Studies 3 and 4 reveal that the avoidant feelings
that accompany exposure to (or thoughts about) disgust elicitors are not a necessary prerequisite
to the identification of a disgust elicitor as being disgusting. Thus, not feeling a visceral
subjective response does not necessarily affect one’s categorization of a stimulus as disgusting.
At the same time, Study 2 suggests that, unlike gut feelings of disgust, responses that consist
primarily of categorization without strong avoidant feelings may not enhance moral judgments.
This implies that in order to judge a disgusting taboo violation as wrong, the feeling (and not just
the idea) of disgust needs to be there.
Study Limitations and Future Directions.
One of the major limitations of these studies is the failure to elicit incidental visceral
disgust through manipulation of the physical environment. Because of this, even though the
Situated Focus theory did not receive any direct support from this research, it cannot entirely be
disconfirmed on the basis of what is presented here. These studies demonstrate that power can
exert a buffering effect against the experience of disgust; but it is not known whether, once it has
truly set in, the experience of disgust affects powerful individuals’ judgments to a greater extent
(or, as the Approach Theory would have it, to a lesser extent). Thus, the most important future
direction for this line of research is to elicit visceral disgust powerfully enough to replicate
known effects of disgust on judgment. This will make it possible to determine whether power not
POWERFUL GUTS 41
only makes individuals resistant to the experience of disgust, but also prevents disgust that is
experienced from influencing judgment. To that end, replicating the design of Study 1 in this
paper with a gustatory disgust manipulation (see Eskine et al, 2011) is a crucial next step.
Gustatory disgust is inherently visceral, completely incidental to moral judgment, and, like
olfactory disgust, is unavoidable when a person is brought into contact with an elicitor. These
characteristics afford a great advantage over the disgust manipulation used in this research,
which likely suffered from the limitation that it is relatively easy not to attend to one’s physical
surroundings (particularly when one is in a state of low vigilance), and thus not to be deeply
affected by them.
A second future direction for this line of research is to continue disentangling the effects
of power on the “gut” disgust response as opposed to the mere categorization of an object as
“disgusting.” Psychophysiological measures are an ideal method for directly measuring the
visceral disgust response, and would thus allow a direct test of whether the results of my Studies
3 and 4 are truly explicable by the fact that power is attenuating the gut disgust response, while
not compromising (and if anything, enhancing) the tendency to identify objects as disgusting.
Subjects’ physiological responses to disgust elicitors should be measured along with their
explicit ratings of how disgusting those stimuli are. A control condition should show a positive
relationship between the disgust response and the extent to which a stimulus is rated as
disgusting; however if my interpretation of the results in paper is accurate, subjects in a High
Power condition should show an attenuated physiological disgust response, without any
significant difference from the control group in their explicit ratings of disgust. This would offer
a more decisive test of the feeling/attribution “decoupling” mechanism I propose to explain the
results of Studies 3 and 4 in this paper.
POWERFUL GUTS 42
Conclusion
Two dominant psychological theories of power offer diverging perspectives on how
power and disgust ought to interact. Insofar as disgust is a threat-driven response that is
particularly associated with vulnerability to contaminants, if power is a heightened state of
approach then disgust responses should be attenuated. On the other hand, if a power-derived
“situated focus” causes individuals to be more immediately influenced by their own subjective
states (particularly ones that are visceral), it is possible that the effects of disgust on judgment
and behavior could be enhanced by a powerful mindset. In four studies, I present evidence of an
approach-based barrier to feelings of disgust. En route to doing so, I uncover an important
subtlety to the psychological construct of disgust: subjective feelings of disgust are not always
necessary in order for an object to be identified as “disgusting.” Lastly, the way in which power
affects judgments of harmless taboo violations in this research suggests that it is the feelings (as
opposed to the identification) of disgust that accounts for the influence of disgust on people’s
judgments.
POWERFUL GUTS 43
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POWERFUL GUTS 49
APPENDIX
Scales and measures utilized in this research.
1. The Sense of Power Scale (Anderson & Galinsky, 2006)
1. I can get people to listen to what I say.
2. My wishes don’t carry much weight.
3. I can get others to do what I want.
4. Even if I voice them, my views have little sway.
5. I think I have a great deal of power.
6. My ideas and opinions are often ignored.
7. Even when I try, I am often not able to get my way.
8. If I want to, I get to make the decisions.
2. The Disgust Scale – Revised
Part 1
“Please indicate how much you agree with each of the following statements, or
how true it is of you”
1. I might be willing to try eating monkey meat, under some circumstances.
2. It would bother me to be in a science class, and to see a human hand preserved in a jar.
3. It bothers me to hear someone clear a throat full of mucous.
4. I never let any part of my body touch the toilet seat in public restrooms.
5. I would go out of my way to avoid walking through a graveyard.
6. Seeing a cockroach in someone else's house doesn't bother me.
7. It would bother me tremendously to touch a dead body.
8. If I see someone vomit, it makes me sick to my stomach.
9. I probably would not go to my favorite restaurant if I found out that the cook had a cold.
10. It would not upset me at all to watch a person with a glass eye take the eye out of the socket.
11. It would bother me to see a rat run across my path in a park.
12. I would rather eat a piece of fruit than a piece of paper*
13. Even if I was hungry, I would not drink a bowl of my favorite soup if it had been stirred by a used but
thoroughly washed flyswatter.
14. It would bother me to sleep in a nice hotel room if I knew that a man had died of a heart attack in that
room the night before.
Part 2
“How disgusting would you find the following experiences?”
1. You see maggots on a piece of meat in an outdoor garbage pail.
2. You see a person eating an apple with a knife and fork*
POWERFUL GUTS 50
3. While you are walking through a tunnel under a railroad track, you smell urine.
4. You take a sip of soda, and then realize that you drank from the glass that an acquaintance of yours had
been drinking from.
5. Your friend's pet cat dies, and you have to pick up the dead body with your bare hands.
6. You see someone put ketchup on vanilla ice cream, and eat it.
7. You see a man with his intestines exposed after an accident.
8. You discover that a friend of yours changes underwear only once a week.
9. A friend offers you a piece of chocolate shaped like dog-doo.
10. You accidentally touch the ashes of a person who has been cremated.
11. You are about to drink a glass of milk when you smell that it is spoiled.
12. As part of a sex education class, you are required to inflate a new unlubricated condom, using your
mouth.
13. You are walking barefoot on concrete, and you step on an earthworm.
*Attention check items, not included in scale analysis
3. Subjective Disgust vs. Disgust Attributions (Study 4)
Subjective Disgust
“Please indicate how much you agree with each of the following statements”
1. If I was at a restaurant, and I accidentally touched a wad of chewing gum under the table, I
would completely lose my appetite.
2. It would make me sick to find out that someone changed their underwear only once a week.
3. If I walked into someone’s house and smelled garbage, it would make me feel nauseous
4. Opening a container in my fridge and seeing that its contents were moldy and spoiled would
make me feel ill
5. It would bother me to see a human hand preserved in a jar
Disgust Attributions
“Please indicate how much you agree with each of the following statements”
1. It is just disgusting to stick wads of chewing gum under tables and other various surfaces in
public places.
2. People who only change their underwear once per week are disgusting
3. Not taking the garbage out until you can smell it is gross
4. Letting spoiled food sit in the fridge is revolting
5. Dismembered body parts are horrifying
Abstract (if available)
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Beall, Erica M.
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Core Title
Powerful guts: how power limits the role of disgust in moral judgment
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College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
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Master of Arts
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Psychology
Publication Date
07/10/2013
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