title: The self in moral judgement: How self-affirmation affects the moral condemnation of harmless sexual taboo violations.
abstract: People frequently condemn harmless sexual taboo behaviours. Based on self-affirmation theory, we predicted that providing an opportunity to self-affirm decreases the tendency to morally condemn harmless sexual taboos. In Experiment 1, we found evidence that self-affirmation decreases the moral condemnation of harmless sexual taboos and ruled out that this was due to a decrease in how disgusting participants considered taboo acts. In Experiment 2, we replicated this effect and demonstrated the mediating role of self-directed threat emotions. These results demonstrate that the tendency to morally condemn harmless sexual taboos arises in part from the need to protect self-integrity. We discuss the implications for the role of the self and emotions in moral judgements and interventions aimed at increasing the acceptability of harmless sexual taboos.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Social and Organisational Psychology , Leiden University , Leiden , the Netherlands.
authors.forename: Marlon
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mooijman
authors.forename: Wilco W
authors.initials: WW
authors.lastname: Van Dijk
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003674:Defense Mechanisms; D005260:Female; D061347:Forgiveness; D006801:Humans; D007206:Individuality; D008297:Male; D009426:Netherlands; D035481:Retrospective Moral Judgment; D012649:Self Concept; D012725:Sexual Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D012945:Social Values; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology; D013609:Taboo / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Emotions; Harmless taboo violations; Moral judgements; Self-affirmation; Self-threat