Mull Moral Disgust’s Effect in Consumption

The cupcakes with the Halloween ghost design looked exactly like the cupcakes with the Ku Klux Klan design. Which was precisely the point for the researchers at Israel’s College of Law and Business and Ono Academic College. Their objective was to evaluate the influence of moral associations on the consumer-reported tastiness of food products. The researchers predicted that the racist associations of the KKK would disgust consumers, and disgust disrupts the sweet pleasure of a cupcake.
     That’s what happened. College students served cupcakes described as having been decorated to look like KKK Klansmen rated the cupcakes as less tasty than did college students served identical cupcakes instead described as having a Halloween ghost design. Companion studies, using a broader sample of American adults, supported attributing the effect to moral disgust and showed it was limited to sensory dimensions. The KKK label substantially depressed ratings of cupcake attractiveness, sweetness, and freshness, but not ratings of caloricity or healthfulness.
     Notice that the relationship between moral disgust and physical disgust in the studies is not just metaphorical. Being morally disgusted generates physical sensations of disgust. It’s a relationship seen in other studies, too. After watching a film portraying incest, shoppers drank less chocolate milk than did shoppers who watched a morally inoffensive film. The choking off of chocolate milk consumption also happened when shoppers were asked to think about instances of fraud or cheating.
     The researchers at University of Pennsylvania, University of Colorado-Boulder, Duke University, and Fundação Getúlio Vargas looked at consumption of chocolate milk and water, but they say their conclusions apply to all sorts of eating and drinking. When people are morally disgusted, the disgust generalizes psychologically so that the people are less interested in buying foods and beverages.
     But since I don’t expect you’ll be showing flicks on incest, fraud, or cheating real often to your shoppers, what does all this mean for you?
     It means that it’s worthwhile to keep your enterprise morally clean.
     It also means that we might reduce consumers’ physical disgust by changing their moral perspective. For instance, entomophagy—including insects in diets—has been promoted as a way to address world hunger. But many people in Western food cultures get physically repulsed about gulping down bugs. Let’s consider how we can increase acceptance of entomophagy by persuading consumers it would be immoral to reject the practice out of hand when considering its societal advantages.

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