**Contributors**
Bryan Dalley, Mandoline Stephen, Chris Lin, and Jessica Hill.
**Abstract/Summary**
Emotions allow morality to develop (Green & Haidt, 2002; Haidt, 2001; Rozin, Lowery, Imada, & Haidt, 1999). According to this view, the immorality of a situation is dependent on how it makes one feel (Eskine, Kacinik, & Prinz, 2011). Evidence supports the view that moral disgust is linked with physical disgust (Borg, Lieberman, & Kiehl, 2008; Schnall, Haidt, Clore, & Jordan, 2008). Some psychologists have suggested that this link may be caused by the evolutionary development of humans. They argue that because physical disgust arose to protect humans from dangerous pathogens, such as poisons, it is logical to assume that moral disgust arose to keep humans safe from social dangers, such as incest (Chapman, Kim, Susskind, & Anderson, 2009).
Eskine et al. published one of the first studies that indicated a link between taste perception and moral disgust (2011). The study by Eskine et al. showed that when participants tasted something bitter, they judged scenarios as being more morally wrong than participants that had tasted something sweet. Because of its implications, researchers have cited this study almost 350 times according to Google Scholar.
However, because the scientific community is experiencing a replication crisis (Everett & Earp, 2015; Lilienfeld, 2017), readers should be skeptical when reading published research, even if it's well-cited. Indeed, an original study's popularity does not indicate that its results are accurate, but rather its popularity further shows the need for it to be replicated (Makel, Plucker, & Hegarty, 2012). Because the study by Eskine et al. (2011) is so popular, our goal is to replicate their study to verify its results. In doing so, we will follow their procedures as outlined in their published article and also perform two additional procedures to address potential limitations. Their original hypotheses were: (a) participants that have tasted something bitter will perceive situations as being more morally wrong than participants that have tasted something sweet or neutral and (b) politically conservative participants will be more affected by the stimulus than politically liberal participants. Our new hypotheses are: (a) female participants will be more affected by the stimulus than male participants (Herz, 2014) and (b) participants with greater taste sensitivity will be more affected by the stimulus than participants with lower taste sensitivity (Herz, 2014).
**Participants**
We plan on having 140 participants (70 males and 70 females). We will collect data until we have a sample of size of at least 140. Participants will be undergraduates from Utah Valley University.
**Methods**
After a participant provides consent, a researcher will explain that the purpose of the study is to determine whether motor movements involved with drinking influence moral judgments while reading about others. The researcher will then explain that he or she will provide the participant with two cups both filled with a teaspoon of a beverage (which will either be Minute Maid Berry Punch, Swedish bitters, or water, which will be selected at random) and that when told to do so, the participant should drink the contents of one of the cups in a single swift motion, "as if you were drinking a shot." After drinking from the first cup, the participant will assess the morality of various scenarios using Wheatley and Haidt's (2005) moral vignettes: second cousins engaging in consensual incest, a man eating his already-dead dog, a congressman accepting bribes, a lawyer prowling hospitals for victims, a person shoplifting, and a student stealing library books (The participant will drink the second cup at the halfway point to ensure that the taste is strong). All participants will receive the same six moral vignettes, in counterbalanced order.
Participants will rate how "morally wrong" each situation is by making a slash on a 14-cm line ranging from not at all morally wrong to extremely morally wrong. These marks will then be converted to a scale ranging from 0-100, with higher numbers indicating harsher moral judgments. The participant will then complete a language distractor task, which will consist of rating sentences on imagability and answering questions on his or her language background. Afterwards, each participant will provide basic demographic information; assess how bitter, neutral, sweet, or disgusting the beverage was on a 7-point scale ranging from not at all (1) to very much (7); and write what he or she thinks the study is actually about. The entire questionnaire will be administered in paper format and is attached to this form.
After the participant completes the questionnaire, the researcher will explain the true purpose of the study (to assess if taste perception influences moral judgment) and explain that deception was required so that the participant's knowledge wouldn't interfere with the results. After the debriefing, the researcher will explain to the participant what fungiform papillae (i.e., taste buds) are and that we are interested to know if the amount of fungiform papillae on a person's tongue influences the effect of the stimulus (i.e., the beverage). The researcher will be give the participant another consent form that will explain how fungiform papillae will be counted. (The second consent form is necessary because the study must be exactly the same as the original before we can add new variables.) After the participant provides additional consent, the researcher will ask him to dye his tongue blue by dipping a cotton swab in food dye and then rubbing it on his tongue. This will allow the fungiform papillae to be visible because they will appear pink in contrast to the blue tongue. The researcher will then take a photo of the participants tongue so that fungiform papillae can be counted.(A video on how fungiform papillae will be counted and analyzed can be seen at www.jove.com/video/52860/denver-papillae-protocol-for-objective-analysis-of-fungiform-papillae.)
