Uncommitted taboo thoughts can contaminate and trigger symbolic moral cleansing

Evidence

Moral cleansing Resource constraints can bring people into disturbingly close psychological contact with temptations to compromise sacred values. The SVPM predicts that decisionmakers will feel tainted by merely contemplating scenarios that breach the psychological wall between secular and sacred and engage in symbolic acts of moral cleansing that reaffirm their solidarity with the moral community. This prediction should not be confused with self-affirmation hypotheses derived from dissonance theory . First, unlike dissonance theory, the SVPM predicts a mere contemplation effect: it is not necessary to commit a counter-normative act: it is sufficient for counter-normative thoughts to flicker briefly through consciousness before rejecting them. That pre-rejection interval, during which one’s natural first reaction to propositions is to consent , can produce a subjective sense – however unjustified – that one has been contaminated [17,18]. Second, the SVPM predicts that the longer one contemplates taboo-breaching proposals, the more contaminated one should feel. — Philip E. Tetlock, Thinking the unthinkable, 13

Categorization

• QUESTION: The claim that merely contemplating a taboo breaches a psychological wall and contaminates — this predicts moral-cleansing rituals even absent any deed, a counterintuitive mechanism worth pressing against the reader’s threat-hardened-belief question.
• XREF: connects to: Taboo proposals contaminate the self and provoke defensive moral reactions. — Philip E. Tetlock, Thinking the unthinkable: sacred values…, 7; Witnessing an uncondemned taboo trade-off triggers compensatory moral cleansing in observers. — Philip E. Tetlock, Thinking the unthinkable: sacred values…, 26

Related

• Taboo proposals contaminate the self and provoke defensive moral reactions. (similarity 0.85)
• Witnessing an uncondemned taboo trade-off triggers compensatory moral cleansing in observers. (similarity 0.84)
• Merely contemplating trade-offs on sacred values provokes moral outrage beyond cognitive confusion (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Witnessing an uncondemned taboo trade-off triggers compensatory moral cleansing in observers. #corroborates (1.00) — Philip E. Tetlock, Thinking the unthinkable, 26