CAD revisited: Effects of the word moral on the moral relevance of disgust (and other emotions)

The CAD model posits a mapping of contempt, anger, and disgust onto the moral codes of community, autonomy, and divinity, respectively. A recent study by Hutcherson and Gross posited moral disgust as the dominant other-condemning emotion across all three moral codes. However, the methodology used may have incidentally increased the relevance of disgust. In the current experiment, one condition repeated Hutcherson and Gross’s procedure, while in another condition, the authors added the word moral to three other emotions. Consistent with CAD, anger had the highest intensity ratings in response to autonomy violations, whereas "grossed out" was the dominant response to divinity violations. Furthermore, the adjective "moral" increased the relevance of anger, contempt, and fear in irrelevant domains, which suggests that the adjective moral increases any emotion’s moral relevance.