Commentators raise fundamental questions about the notion of purity (sect. R1), the architecture of moral cognition (sect. R2), the functional relationship between morality and cooperation (sect. R3), the role of folk-theories of self-control in moral judgment (sect. R4), and the cultural variation of morality (sect. R5). In our response, we address all these issues by clarifying our theory of puritanism, responding to counter-arguments, and incorporating welcome corrections and extensions.

Why do many societies moralize apparently harmless pleasures, such as lust, gluttony, alcohol, drugs, and even music and dance? Why do they erect temperance, asceticism, sobriety, modesty, and piety as cardinal moral virtues? According to existing theories, this puritanical morality cannot be reduced to concerns for harm and fairness: It must emerge from cognitive systems that did not evolve for cooperation (e.g., disgust-based “purity” concerns). Here, we argue that, despite appearances, puritanical morality is no exception to the cooperative function of (...) moral cognition. It emerges in response to a key feature of cooperation, namely that cooperation is (ultimately) a long-term strategy, requiring (proximately) the self-control of appetites for immediate gratification. Puritanical moralizations condemn behaviors which, although inherently harmless, are perceived as indirectly facilitating uncooperative behaviors, by impairing the self-control required to refrain from cheating. Drinking, drugs, immodest clothing, and unruly music and dance are condemned as stimulating short-term impulses, thus facilitating uncooperative behaviors (e.g., violence, adultery, free-riding). Overindulgence in harmless bodily pleasures (e.g., masturbation, gluttony) is perceived as making people slave to their urges, thus altering abilities to resist future antisocial temptations. Daily self-discipline, ascetic temperance, and pious ritual observance are perceived as cultivating the self-control required to honor prosocial obligations. We review psychological, historical, and ethnographic evidence supporting this account. We use this theory to explain the fall of puritanism in western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies, and discuss the cultural evolution of puritanical norms. Explaining puritanical norms does not require adding mechanisms unrelated to cooperation in our models of the moral mind. (shrink)

We conducted a four-part study to map out the conceptual space of a diverse set of immoral items, including those that are extreme and/or intergroup (e.g. child sex abuse, genocide, slavery), with the goal of identifying attributes spontaneously used in moral judgment. In Part 1, we identified 56 immoral items. In Part 2, participants completed a similarity-based card sort task of the 56 immoral items. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) indicated that three-dimensional space was needed to capture the perceived differences among the (...) items. In Part 3, regression analysis indicated that perceived similarity among the immoral items related to their commonness, objectivity, forgivability, and legality. In Part 4, regression analysis indicated that the configuration of immoral items corresponded to the amount of anger and disgust the items elicited and items’ perceived harmfulness. We attempt to synthesize these results and answer questions about the roles of anger, disgust, and harm in moral judgment. (shrink)

Munch-Jurisic’s account of perpetrator disgust raises important new questions concerning the complexity of emotions and their connection with moral actions. In this commentary, we discuss this account by applying some of the author’s ideas to the case of anger. We suggest that just as the relations between disgust and moral action are much more nuanced than previously thought, as Munch-Jurisic explains, analyses of anger can also profit from a more careful approach to such connections. Specifically, we propose that contextual factors (...) can affect the moral character of anger reactions, which in turn can provide them with moral value. We also argue that the contextual view deployed to study disgust reactions can also support distinctions between core forms and socio-moral forms of the same emotion, which in turn raises interesting questions concerning different forms of anger. Lastly, we extend the contextual approach to problems of emotion individuation and theories in emotion science, showing how current scientific emotion theories can learn from a detailed examination of disgust, anger, and other context-sensitive emotions. We aim to highlight some important contributions of Munch-Jurisic’s work to broader discussions on emotions, morality, and how to theorize about emotions overall. (shrink)