Emotional and Behavioural Reactions to Moral Transgressions: Cross-Cultural and Individual Variations in India and Britain

International Journal of Psychology, Vol. 45(1), pg. 64 - 71, 2010.

by Simon M. Laham, Sonavi Chopra, Mansur Lalljee, Brian Parkinson

Reactions to moral transgressions are subject to influence at both the cultural and individual levels. Transgressions against an individual's rights or against social conventions of hierarchy may elicit different reactions in individualistic and collectivistic cultures. In the current study, affective and behavioural reactions to transgressions of autonomy (rights) and community (hierarchy) were examined in India and Britain. Results revealed that although reactions to autonomy transgressions are similar in India and Britain, Indian participants express more moral outrage than do Britons in response to transgressions of community. Results also supported the contention of emotion-specificity in affective moral reaction: Participants in both India and Britain reported anger in response to autonomy transgressions, but contempt in response to violations of community. Importantly, these results extend previous research by demonstrating the importance of emotion specificity in moral reactions, as opposed to categorization or dilemma resolution. In addition, an individual difference measure of respect for persons was shown to moderate reactions to moral transgressions. Specifically, participants with high respect for persons were less negative to violators of the community ethic, but not the autonomy ethic. These findings highlight the importance of examining emotion-specific responses in the moral domain and introduce a significant individual difference variable, respect for persons, into the psychology of morality.

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