MORALIZATION AND BECOMING A VEGETARIAN: The Transformation of Preferences Into Values and the Recruitment of Disgust

We describe a rather common process that we call moralization, in which objects or activities that were previously morally neutral acquire a moral component. Moralization converts preferences into values, and in doing so influences cross-generational transmission (because values are passed more effectively in families than are preferences), increases the likelihood of intemalization, invokes greater emotional response, and mobilizes the support of governmental and other cultural institutions. In recent decades, we claim, cigarette smoking in America has become moralized. We support our claims about some of the consequences of moralization with an analysis of differences between health and moral vegetarians. Compared with health vegetarians, moral vegetarians find meat more disgusting, offer more reasons in support of their meat avoidance, and avoid a wider range of animal foods. However, contrary to our prediction, liking for meat is about the same in moral and health vegetarians. In this article, we identify a process that we call moralization. This process works at both the individual and cultural levels, and involves the acquisition of moral qualities by objects or activities that previously were morally neutral. We believe that moralization is common, at both the cultural and the individual levels, and that it has significance for understanding norms, socialization, and, particularly, health-related behaviors and attitudes on health issues. The significance of moralization is that it converts preferences into values. Values are more durable than preferences, more central to the self, and more internalized (McCauley, Rozin, & Schwartz, 1995), We therefore suggest that values are more likely to promote cognitive consistency, and hence the accrual of multiple justifications for the relevant action or avoidance. Two other critical differences between values and preferences are that values, unlike preferences, are subject to institutional and legal support and that values are much more likely than preferences to be transmitted in the family environment, via socialization-intemalization (Cavalli-Sforza, Feldman, Chen, & Dombusch, 1982; Rozin, 1991), Changes in attitudes to slavery are an example of moralization in American history. The clearest example on the current scene in the United States is the conversion of cigarette smoking from a personal preference into an immoral activity. The passive-smoking/sidestreamsmoke debate has made a case that cigarette smoking harms other people, a clearly immoral act. As a consequence of moral aspects, governments and corporations have been enabled to discourage or prohibit smoking. Individuals feel entitled to censure smokers and seem more annoyed by the eye irritation caused by smoke in the air, and perhaps more disgusted by the ash and cigarette butt residues of smoking. There is, of course, a corresponding process that we can call amorAddress correspondence to Paul Rozin, Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, 3815 Walnut St., Philadelphia, PA 19104-6196. alization in which values become preferences. One can see such effects in progress in American society with respect to divorce or smoking of marijuana. Both preferences and values link into affective systems. However, the linkage of values is of particular interest and potency because values (or their violations) tend to invoke strong moral emotions, such as anger, contempt, disgust, guilt, and shame. We have paid particular attention to the emotion of disgust as a means through which strong aversions and rejections can be established (Rozin & Fallon, 1987; Rozin, Haidt, & McCauley, 1993). We have argued that disgust originated as a specific type of ideational food rejection, but that, through cultural evolution, disgust is "applied" to a wide variety of objects and events, as a means of supporting and internalizing avoidance of these objects and events. Thus, disgust, sometimes in a moral or quasi-moral framework, is invoked in response to body products (via toilet training), contact with death, inappropriate sex, and certain clearly immoral offenses such as gory crimes or familial violence (Rozin et al., 1993; Haidt, McCauley, & Rozin, 1994). Moral values are often referred to as internalized, that is, as a part of the self; for example, cigarette smoking is a much more significant personal feature now than it was a generation ago. We predict that the moral linkage encourages the occurrence of a hedonic shift: An object or activity that is aligned with one's moral views is more likely to become liked, and one that is in violation of such views is more likely to become disliked (McCauley et al., 1995). Our aim in this article is to introduce and describe moralization (see also Rozin, in press), and to provide evidence for some of its consequences in the domain of vegetarianism. We do not propose to shed light on the mechanisms of moralization in this first article on moralization. However, our interviews and observations (see also Amato & Partridge, 1989) suggest that strong affective experiences, such as seeing animals slaughtered for purposes of consumption, or losing a relative to lung cancer, can have powerful effects in promoting moralization. More cognitive routes, such as reading a book about animal rights, or examining public-health statistics on smoking, can also promote moralization. An initial effort to identify factors that may promote moralization (Rozin, in press) indicates, for example, that Protestantism may provide a favorable environment for moralization. Also, the likelihood of moralization seems to increase if the offending activity causes harm to children, or is practiced primarily by an already stigmatized minority. Denial of rights or opportunities is the central focus of the American (and other Western) moral system. Hence, the portrayal of cigarette smoking as harming people other than the smoker (belief in harmful effects of sidestream smoke) or belief that animals have rights provides an intellectual basis for considering cigarette smoking or meat eating immoral. In other cultures, such as Hindu India, the domain of morality is broader and different (Shweder, Much, Mahapatra, & Park, in press), and hence the domain of moralization is VOL. 8, NO. 2, MARCH 1997 Copyright © 1997 American Psychological Society 67 PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE