University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.
The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA.
Pers Soc Psychol Rev. 2023 Aug;27(3):272-308. doi: 10.1177/10888683221124741. Epub 2022 Oct 31.
The idea of "purity" transformed moral psychology. Here, we provide the first systematic review of this concept. Although often discussed as one construct, we reveal ~9 understandings of purity, ranging from respecting God to not eating gross things. This striking heterogeneity arises because purity-unlike other moral constructs-is not understood by what it but what it : obvious interpersonal harm. This poses many problems for moral psychology and explains why purity lacks convergent and divergent validity and why purity is confounded with politics, religion, weirdness, and perceived harm. Because purity is not a coherent construct, it cannot be a distinct basis of moral judgment or specially tied to disgust. Rather than a specific moral domain, purity is best understood as a loose set of themes in moral rhetoric. These themes are scaffolded on cultural understandings of harm-the broad, pluralistic harm outlined by the Theory of Dyadic Morality.
People are fascinated by morality-how do people make moral judgments and why do liberals and conservatives seem to frequently disagree? "Purity" is one moral concept often discussed when talking about morality-it has been suggested to capture moral differences across politics and to demonstrate the evolutionary roots of morality, especially the role of disgust in moral judgment. However, despite the many books and articles that mention purity, there is no systematic analysis of purity. Here, we review all existing academic articles focused on purity in morality. We find that purity is an especially messy concept that lacks scientific validity. Because it is so poorly defined and inconsistently measured, it should not be invoked to explain our moral minds or political differences.
“纯洁”的概念改变了道德心理学。在这里，我们首次对这一概念进行了系统的回顾。尽管它经常被作为一个整体概念来讨论，但我们揭示了纯洁的约 9 种理解，从尊重上帝到不吃恶心的东西。这种惊人的异质性源于纯洁与其他道德建构不同，它不是通过其本身来理解，而是通过其：明显的人际伤害来理解。这给道德心理学带来了许多问题，也解释了为什么纯洁缺乏收敛性和发散性有效性，以及为什么纯洁与政治、宗教、怪异和感知到的伤害有关。由于纯洁不是一个连贯的建构，它不能成为道德判断的一个独特基础，也不能与厌恶感特别联系在一起。纯洁与其说是一个特定的道德领域，不如说是道德修辞中的一套松散的主题。这些主题是基于文化对伤害的理解而构建的——这是二元道德理论所概述的广泛而多元化的伤害。
人们对道德充满好奇——人们如何做出道德判断，为什么自由派和保守派似乎经常意见不合？“纯洁”是在讨论道德时经常提到的一个道德概念——它被认为可以捕捉到政治上的道德差异，并展示道德的进化根源，尤其是厌恶感在道德判断中的作用。然而，尽管有许多书籍和文章提到了纯洁，但对纯洁的系统性分析却很少。在这里，我们回顾了所有关于道德纯洁性的现有学术文章。我们发现，纯洁是一个特别混乱的概念，缺乏科学有效性。由于它的定义如此模糊，衡量标准也不一致，因此不应该用它来解释我们的道德思维或政治分歧。
