Moral violations that target more valued victims elicit more anger, but not necessarily more disgust

The same moral violation can give rise to different emotional and behavioral responses in different individuals. The mechanisms that give rise to such differences – and the functions that those mechanisms serve – are unclear. Previous work suggests that people experience greater anger toward violations that target themselves or kin than those that target others, whereas they experience greater disgust toward violations that target others than those that target themselves or kin. In turn, anger has a stronger relation with direct aggression than indirect aggression, and disgust a stronger relation with indirect aggression than direct aggression. The current study tests whether these patterns depend on the value observers place on the targets of moral violations, even within folk relationship categories. In two studies, we asked participants to think of a person they know and to imagine that person being targeted by a moral violation described in a vignette. We assessed the value that participants placed on the target using a financial tradeoff task, their emotional reaction to the violation, and their desires to aggress toward the perpetrator. Results revealed that: (1) interpersonal value relates more strongly to anger than disgust toward the moral violation; (2) interpersonal value relates more strongly to direct than indirect aggression motives; and (3) anger relates to both direct and indirect aggression motives, whereas disgust relates only to indirect aggression motives. These results suggest that the value one places on the victims of moral violations influences emotional and behavioral reactions to those violations.