Does Disgust Increase Unethical Behavior? A Replication of Winterich, Mittal, and Morales (2014) Fails to Reproduce Results

Does Disgust Increase Unethical Behavior? A Replication of Winterich, Mittal, and Morales (2014). Tamar Kugler, Charles N. Noussair, Denton Hatch. Social Psychological and Personality Science, August 3, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550620944083

Abstract: We consider the relationship between disgust and ethical behavior. Winterich, Mittal, and Morales report several experiments finding that disgust increases unethical behavior. We replicated three of their studies, using high-powered designs with a total of 1,239 participants, three different procedures to induce disgust, and three different measures of unethical behavior. We observe no effect of disgust on unethical behavior in any of the studies, supporting the contention that disgust has no effect on ethical decision making.

Keywords: unethical behavior, self-interested behavior, disgust, emotion, replication